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3 Days in Carpathia (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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3 Days In Carpathia
198? Ram Jam Corp

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: George Stone
Graphics: Hugh Riley
Sound: Unknown

“3 Days” was to be the sequel to the popular “Valkyrie 17″ game by George Stone and The Ramjam Corp.

The game was to be a text adventure, which was written using “The Biro”. Featuring character set screens, livened up with moving sprites (Including a dodo which fixated on you as its mother when it hatched), the game was shaping up well. All words in the adventure were in Carpathian, until you found a dictionary in the game.

Promising indeed, though it is unknown why it was never released, or even how far exactly it got. Its unlikely that it was finished, due to sources revealed below. Ram Jam were never too popular after the dire “Explorer” game they released for Electric Dreams, but with the guy mentioned next, maybe they were finally onto something…

Hugh Riley, popular for his work on Last Ninja 2, worked on this game a few years earlier. Thanks to Hugh and Jazzcat for his interview, we are now able to see some of the remains of 3 Days. Although not much, you can see some of the graphics in action which Hugh managed to salvage from some of his disks. This was in 2001, when GTW was in hibernation… so its only now in 2005 we’ve realized it was salvaged!  

It’s believed that more exists, and Hugh will hopefully find more in the future.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/3-days-in-carpathia/
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48 Hours  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1996 Smash Designs
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Andre Buerger
Graphics: Andre Buerger
Sound: Sonic

A point and click based adventure game in similar vein to the Lucasfilm series. Move around the locations and solve the puzzles. The game was confirmed to be heavily inspired by Day of The Tenticle by Lucasfilm.

The game was being developed by Andre Buerger who was a big fan of the Lucasfilm game and decided to do his own take for the C64. It wasn’t planned for commercial release as such, but as a bit of fun and something to do.

In all sadly Andre lost interest in the project once the game engine was up and running – which is a shame, as all that was left to do was to create some content.

In recent times however, the game got resurrected in a little way on the Gameboy Advance, which also sadly didn’t quite make it (This was worked on with Groepaz). However, Andre finally managed to get his idea into fruition in the form of Spooky Story on the DS … http://www.spooky-story.de/
If you check out the screens, you will notce some screens looking like they were inspired by the original screens in 48 Hrs.

So there we have it… sadly this is believed to be all that ever was of the C64 game, though we are hoping to hear from Andre shortly about the game, so watch this space!….

More soon?…

Contributions: Groepaz

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/48-hours/
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8 Bit Civilizations  (preview)
Alternative title: Civilization - 8 Bit  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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For 25 years we've all been building empires to stand the test of time. Beginning on Amiga and PC in 1991, it's hard to believe we'd ever see the likes of this epic turn based 4X civ building game on anything less than 16 bits and at least a few hundred kilobytes of RAM. Teased early last year, the game has had a significant amount of work done since the early screenshots. Developer Fabian Hertel has released a fully playable demo for us all to enjoy and also help test by reporting bugs here.

8 Bit Civilizations (working title) has understandably been reduced in scope from the original PC and Amiga versions. For example you can play against a maximum of 3 AI opponents (or 2 if barbarians are enabled), and the world map is not as large. However even in its current state, the game is every bit as fun as the original, and even includes some innovative new features. Such as you may chose the gender of your nation's leader, so if you choose to play the English nation, you be Henry VIII as well as Elizabeth I.

The game board is played from an isometric perspective, a feature which wasn't added in the original line of games until Civilization II (1996). You can also customise your own nations and generate maps based on specific criteria, as well as picking from the default Earth map, and regular nations. Diplomacy screens are yet to be added, and a few other features are missing. System limitations are got around by a modular loading system, where certain actions such as changing to City view require a short load, which is marked by a loading progress bar. But it works pretty well.

The game supports mouse control, but you can also use joystick or keyboard if you don't have one lying around. In my play through I managed to found around 8 cities, produce the Hanging Gardens of Leeds, and a Great Library. Discovered gun powder around 1100BC and lost a catastrophic number of units trying to defeat my neighbouring nation. *** Warning... Just wanting one more turn could ruin your life... Again! (but this time on your favourite 8 bit computer). 


http://www.indieretronews.com/2017/01/8-bit-civilizations-preview-jaw.html
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A Small Getaway  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1992 Cream
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Tamacs Laszlo, Szabadi Gabor
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Jens Christian Huus
Also known as: A small getaway / A little fling

Thanks to Csaba Virág for passing on our next GTW entry, which is a Hungarian text adventure produced by Cream in 1992. The title translates roughly into ‘A little fling’.

Unfortunately you probably won’t be able to play the game unless you know some Hungarian. We do not know also how complete the game is, but its believed to be incomplete.

It is possible that the game was being produced for a release on a games magazine at the time, though more details are needed to confirm.

Hopefully we will find out more about this title soon.

Contributions: Csaba Virág


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/egy-kis-kiruccanas/
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Abrakadabra  (Preview V1)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Abrakadabra
2003 Creators

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Vanja J. Utne
Graphics: Vanja J. Utne
Sound: Vanja J. Utne

Abrakadabra is a sweet horizontally scrolling game where you control an excellently drawn Witch on a broomstick flying across land and shooting things.

In total, two previews were released across 2000 to 2003, both being pretty impressive and promising games. I remember at the time being excited at their release. However, they were not to be and Vanja was unable to get the games completed.

We are sadly now having to put the games into the GTW64 vault as a result along with Armageddon – though maybe Vanja will resurrect this game some day.

We hope at some point to find out more about the game and what happened to it. Maybe more was developed? ….

Vanja will hopefully shed some light soon…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/abrakadabra/
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Abrakadabra  (Preview V2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Abrakadabra
2003 Creators

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Vanja J. Utne
Graphics: Vanja J. Utne
Sound: Vanja J. Utne

Abrakadabra is a sweet horizontally scrolling game where you control an excellently drawn Witch on a broomstick flying across land and shooting things.

In total, two previews were released across 2000 to 2003, both being pretty impressive and promising games. I remember at the time being excited at their release. However, they were not to be and Vanja was unable to get the games completed.

We are sadly now having to put the games into the GTW64 vault as a result along with Armageddon – though maybe Vanja will resurrect this game some day.

We hope at some point to find out more about the game and what happened to it. Maybe more was developed? ….

Vanja will hopefully shed some light soon…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/abrakadabra/
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Acid-House  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Acid House
1990 Wacko Design

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Stefan Walter (Mr Vivace)
Graphics: Bjorn Fogelberg (Knatter)
Sound: Bjorn Fogelberg (Knatter)

An exclusive to GTW which was uncovered on a disk by Jason Kelk in 2005.

This is a really neat two part preview, with the main part featuring a nice sideway scrolling SEU with some nice (if pink..) graphics, and where you have to collect Acid symbols.

The part that follows is kind of a follow on from the main part. As you reach the end of the scrolling level, you come to a place called the Acid House (where the game then crashes). Loading the second file takes you to the phase inside the Acid House. Here a little man runs and gets into an Acid symbol and starts bouncing around a single screen collecting various bits and bobs.

Overall its a nice polished preview, which looks promising for when it was in development. It’s probably about 20-25% complete at this stage. Development was done in Sweden by Stefan Walter and Bjorn Fogelberg, who started this game as their first start in programming. Unfortunately by the time much work was put into the game, the guys felt that the game lacked original and fun ideas.

After pushing the game around a few companies, no interest was gained. After a year, the developers moved onto the Amiga and started producing on that scene instead.

There are no pieces of music, but a range of good bouncy sfx. The music was planned for once the game was complete (or at least at a more complete stage). No presentation as such. Game just has a small text based screen, there is no title screen. Obviously this wasn’t complete at this stage. Here we have two playable game parts and that is it.

Overall, this is about all we are going to find of this game, and thanks to Bjorn, we have finally been able to complete the tale of this game and thus close the case. See Bjorn’s Creators Speak page!

Check it out, and hopefully we will find out more about this mysterious game in the future…

Case closed!…

Contributions: Jason Kelk, Bjorn Fogelberg

Bjorn Fogelberg speaks about work on Acid House...

"Well we started programming on this somewhere around 88-89 I think. We wanted to work with computer games but there wasn't much of that in Sweden at the time. Being young and unexperienced we though we could make a game that would interest a game company, and perhaps get work as freelancers. Unfortunately we worked on if for too long and looking back on it now, the game lacked the first basic rule of what makes a good game: An original and fun idea.

We finished the two parts and tried to get some interest from a bunch of UK game companies, which we didn't. And that was basically it. I quit the C64 the very same year and got my Amiga.

At the same time I was programming my own sound routine - with which I was going to make music. I never got around to make an editor for it but all sound effects in that game uses the sound routine.

Name of the game: No name, but you can call it XAKK game though it says Wacko designers in the packup screen. We never really used that team name anywhere anyway.

Instructions for the main part:

Use Joy 2 to control the ship. The aim is to kill the baddies, collect happy smilies and avoid the sad ones. The more happy smilies you collect, the more stuff you can buy for your ship. Click Control button to enter the shop and use joy and button to buy stuff.

Instructions for the "Acid house" part:

Use Joy 2 to control the bouncy thing. Clicking the button elongates the jumps and pulling down the joy decreases them. Collect happy smilies and avoid other stuff. Random mines are appearing and disapearing on the floor. Avoid them!

Credits Main part:

Coding: Stefan Walter (Mr Vivace)
Graphics/maps, Sound routine & sounds: Bjorn Fogelberg (Knatter)

Credits Acid House part:

Coding, Graphics, Sound routine & sounds: Bjorn Fogelberg (Knatter)"


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/acid-house/
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Aftermath - System Wars  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Note : Needs NTSC to run on ViceX!   This will crash ViceX after a while

1990 M.Dickenson
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Mark A. Dickenson
Graphics: Mark A. Dickenson
Sound: Mark A. Dickenson

Aftermath recently surfaced to GTW thanks to Jason Whitener who kindly brought it to our attention.

The game is a US based game that was programmed by Mark A. Dickenson, who was active on Qlink back in the day (and programmed the Stereo Sid Player as well as several other utilities). Mark was an active supporter of Qlink when it was up and was active in the sid forums.

He went to a couple of Sid conventions they had as an offshoot of the forums they had active at the time, and later went on to develop the Stereo Sid player, with Stereo sid support, supporting both the internal as well as either the second sid mod or the Dr. Evil Labs Stereo Sid Cart. Later he programmed several other programs, one of the more memorable ones being digiplayer, that would play ripped samples, and even supported the reu, allowing for longer ripped samples to be played. Mark even was a software developer on the Commodore 65, designing the music, digital autio and text to speech software.

Aftermath was something that Mark was working on which would allow for stereo sid utilization, REU support and uploadable content support. It was a kind of Ultima/Questron style game with some dated/unrefined graphics compared to some releases you might know. In the demo version we are hosting (thanks to Jason who grabbed it from a BBS many years back), you can see some various bits and pieces from the game, including a world editor.

As far as it is known, the game was never going to be marketed commercially, as the c64/128 market had started to dry up (though this is to be confirmed with Mark).

Mark these days works on a hobby browser based game called Alien Assault Traders … I wonder how much of Aftermath may have sneaked into this game? We hope to find out more soon and learn what fully happened with this game.

For now, check out the demo and enjoy :-)

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/aftermath/
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Ah-Type   (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1988 Cory Kin
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Cory Kin
Graphics: Cory Kin
Sound: N/A

No doubt a working title, but Ah Type is pretty much as you would guess and is a clone of R-Type in very early stages.  But even though it is early stages, what has been done so far is very clean and impressive.

We are treated to a very slick and fast interpretation of the game, which possibly shows a glimpse of how the official conversion could have been.  It’s not got a lot to do, apart from fly your main ship over some of Level 1, and a brief attack wave – but its enough to show case the talents of Cory Kin.

The game was recently recovered from more disks which Cory shipped all the way from the US.  It was developed during his Compunet days and was no doubt to send round companies to show what he was capable of.

There may have been more planned with the game, such as maybe a cheap budget title to riff on the Irem arcade.  We need to find out more from Cory himself.

For now, check it out!

Contributions: Cory Kin

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/ah-type/
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Al the Fish  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A strange, but cute looking game with a well drawn fish as the main character. Similar to the underwater levels of Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, if you want to compare to other games.

There is little in the game, apart from Al The Fish who roams around a small colourful map, with loads of collectable goodies.

The preview is very bugged, and garbage mars the preview at the top of the map, and there is no sound, but there is something about the game which offers plenty of promise.

The game feels good, and looks good, and could have been good… or was it good?… How far did the game ever reach. No-one knew exactly who did what on the game… until now…

Nicolas Stark stepped forward and shed the following light on the game:

"Al the Fish – was meant to be an action RPG where Al was called to rescue his family members who where captured by some evil sea-creature.The game was supposed to contain huge maps and end bosses.

To access certain areas of the map, special items where required which had to be found or conquered by killing special enemies (or so it was projected).

The preview shows still an very early stage of the game, IIRC at least 5 or 6 maps and quite a bit of the enemy sprites had been finished. The project was eventually dropped for the lack of time."

A huge shame then and confirmation that the game was never completed. We hope that Nicolas may have more of the game he can share in time. For now, check out the awesome preview and also have a look at the game that Al the Fish originally was going to be like (Bilbo).

More developments soon we hope!…

Contributions: Nicolas Stark





http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/al-the-fish/
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AlA  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1988 Mastertronic
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Andy Syco
Graphics: Blancmange
Sound: Neil Baldwin

A short entry for a title which was reportedly for Mastertronic back in 1988, but for reasons currently unknown never quite made it.

The game was being developed by Reptilia Design, with code by Andy Syco (of Werewolves in London fame), graphics by Blancmange (?) and sound by Neil Baldwin.  It seems the cracking crew – Fusion, got hold of a pre-release version of the game and leaked it.  Is this the reason why the game didn’t get released?

When you load up the preview – there isn’t a huge amount to do.  You control a large flying guy, who has a limited range of shooting, and must scroll along horizontally – attacked by a series of unimaginative attack waves.  There are no backgrounds or anything else of note, which suggests that this game was at a very early stage.

Do you know anything more about it?


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/ala/
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Alfred J. Kwak  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Alfred J Kwak
1990 Twilight

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Harold Klink
Graphics: Martijn Althuizen
Sound: Harold Klink (?)

Another title from the Twilight guys, Harold Klink and Martijn Althuizen.

Alfred J Kwak is a promising title, which although in a very early development stage, looks like a rather good Mario/Fred’s Back clone with a duck as the main character. The game would have most likely been published by a UK publisher, or by Magic Disk or similiar had it been completed.. though a licence would have had to have been granted, as the game is based on a popular cartoon character.

This game was enthusiastically in development, though sadly interest was lost with the development of the game quite early on, and it was cancelled for concentration to be made on other productions.

From the work disks of Harold and Martijn, GTW has uncovered a series of pictures and a working demo of the game, which you can move the main character, but cannot interact with the scenary of the game. It is therefore a mere glimpse of what could have been had more been done, or had the game been completed. A big thanks to Skeletor for piecing together the jigsaw which was the remains of this game!

Harold has kindly given GTW permission to enclose the source code for the game, which you can download from the link above. Enjoy!

More soon from the developers!…

Contributions: Harold Klink, Martijn Althuizen, Jazzcat, Ignorance, Mat Allen, Skeletor

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/alfred-j-kwak/
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Amazon Tales  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Anasthasia  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A wonderful little GTW here which is a huge disapointment regarding it never being completed and released.

The game is very similiar to Flimbos Quest, though your player must reach the end of the left side of the level map before moving onto the next level, avoiding all kinds of creatures and bad guys.

It’s not easy, and some of the gameplay will have you tearing your hair out a bit. Also the game is slightly bugged in places because it is a work in progress, but overall I was very impressed. As well as some good gameplay, the game looks great and just feels nice.

Unfortunately it seems this game should never had got released even at preview status. Someone is rumoured to have sneaked the game out and released it under the Chromance label, and this wasn’t really known about until a member of the scene spotted it and blew a fuse. Plans were for the game to be finished off and released, but it seems that the crack release may have stopped that chance.

We are therefore not so proud to present the game in those circumstances, but hopefully the developers of this game will be able to get some recognition for their hard work on this title. We hope to find out who these people are and get some words from them about this game and their plans.

More research needed, but check it out… its neat  …

More to come on this game soon we hope!…

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/anasthaia/
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Ancient Legends  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Angel of Hell II  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Angel Of Hell 2
1996 576 KByte

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Robért Olessák
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Olivér Gáspár

Angel of Hell II is a preview of a game by 576 KByte which was produced back in 1996. Sadly it never got completed. It was the sequel to this game.

The preview spans a very impressive 3 disk sides, and comes with a superb introduction sequence which then brings you onto the main game itself.

The game needs an English translation, so I cannot describe much about the game’s story at present – but the game is an impressive looking icon driven graphic adventure game – which looks very promising indeed.

Development of the game overall got quite far, but it seems that it was quite late into the C64′s life, and possibly due to poor sales of previous titles – the game was abandoned as a result. Recently Jazzcat managed to get hold of the remains on the game which we can now present to you to check out for yourselves.

"Thank you for recovering and reviewing our unfinished old game ("Angel of Hell 2"). I accidentally happened to see your article by typing my name in Google (sometimes - but nowadays just rarely - I do this check to see if only there's something news outside...), and I was very glad about it, especially as being very fresh... (I haven't known about your website before... However, it seems a very interesting one to me.) Thus, as you wrote that you were waiting for some further infos from the authors, I decided to reflect to this.

I only started my personal website about half a year ago, where I started to summarize my former game development carreer, too. There I wrote an article of each game I had part in before. I have already translated them to English by myself. Maybe my English is not perfect (the most), but I think (and hope) that's enough to enjoy my writings on the theme... So may I recommend them with love to you.

The title "Angel of Hell 2" is originally "A pokol angyala 2" in Hungarian, even in the English translations of my articles, so you must search for it by this name. The following page contains all my C64 games (so it is the uppermost of them):

http://istennyila.hu/eng/game/game1.htm

Similarly, I uploaded my games (and some short descriptions or synopsis of them) not only to my own site, but also a few other databases (IF Archive, IFDB etc.), so you can find (or even download) them there, too. Such my profile is:

http://ifdb.tads.org/showuser?id=z2nga8huegsop2if

Eventually the most of my developments were either unfinished, or unreleased (or even "partially" unreleased), so they might be interesting to you... My main work was "The Galleon" (or "A gálya" in Hungarian) - a very advanced and intelligent graphic/text adventure game (I could describe it mostly like the well-known Level 9 games in style), that was a great local success (and later even became some kind of "classical") in Hungary (commercially released); but nearly nobody knew it outside the country. In spite of that I wrote both Hungarian and English versions of the game simultaneously, and also tried hard to sell it internationally, too (in vain). I think it was already too late for any C64 game in 1993-94.

I started to write (or only to plan) two sequels to it; one of them was "Horsekiller" (only a cinematic intro was made, that's very similar in manner to the one in "A pokol angyala 2" at the starting, so it might worth a look at least), and the other was "Athar" (that's only a single plan).

So, again: everything you need to know about them is upon my own website!

PS: the other guys who shared part in the PA2 project (that's "Angel of Hell 2") was called as Mantis Software, and had got two previous games: one is the first part of the game ("Angel of Hell", as you also referred), and the other was "The Castle" (or originally "A kastély" in Hungarian). That's also a very good game (and also released by 576 KByte), also findable in the GB64 database (here: http://gb64.com/game.php?id=1302 ), like my game "The Galleon" (here: http://gb64.com/game.php?id=3036 ). (Some of my other games still not.)

However, those games "Angel of Hell" and "The Castle" were only subsequently translated to English (I don't know by whom, but surely not by the original authors, as they were originally only made to the Hungarian market)."

Robert Olessak.

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/angel-of-hell-2/
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Angry Birds  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Antaeus  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Alloyrun
1987 Starlight
Status: Full Game, Findability: 5/5

Coding: David Saunders
Graphics: Ashley Routledge
Sound: Jeroen Tel, Rob Hubbard
Other: Charles Deenen (SFX - unpublished)
Also known as: Antaeus

A nice little sideways SEU created by the well respected Ashley Routledge and Dave Saunders (Ash and Dave). Featuring some neat (if strange) parallax scrolling and graphics, this game isn’t that bad at all.

Although it’s no Armalyte, its a good game and also features a great little title screen, with a band playing to the title tune… typical of Ash and Dave styled demos. Jeroen Tel also provided some of his first C64 music for the game to add to the polish of a strong little game.

Originally, the game wasn’t going to be called Alloyrun, but in fact had an initial name as Antaeus. But after finding out that this was in fact a brand name of an aftershave, the name was scrapped quickly in favour of their second name, ‘Alloyrun’.

In its original Antaeus form, the game was submitted to Firebird for evaluation – but they rejected the game.  In the end, Starlight would pick up the title and was to become the eventual publisher.

Although the game was actually completed and ready for release, Starlight ran into financial difficulties and were unable to pay Ash and Dave for their efforts. Therefore, both Ash and Dave would not let Starlight release the game until they were paid. This never happened, and the game was canned.

It’s believed that Ash and Dave then, with no other publishers, released the game onto the scene for the sake of it.  However, neither could recall doing so – so it seems it was leaked by someone within the scene.

Recently in 2016, whilst digitally preserving Ashley Routledge’s work disks,  a build of Alloyrun in the form of Antaeus was found fully working.  It includes temporary Rob Hubbard tunes from Ace 2 and Firebird logos.  It is probably the version that was pitched to Firebird.  The game itself isn’t too different from the final version, but is a nice curiosity to see.

Contributions: Ian Osbourne, Chain, HVSC, Fix, Bieno, Martin Pugh, Jazzcat, Ashley Routledge, David Saunders, Nemo


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/alloyrun/
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Apollo 14  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Preview
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A great looking game in similar style to the first part of Dynamic’s "Game Over", with some awesome graphics in similar style to those common with X-Ample games of the early 90′s.

This game is not based on any moon landings or space trips, but of a space man who roams around various flick-screen colourful rooms of shooting pods and robots, all of which animate beautifully. Not only that, but the main character is well defined with a hi-res overlay and great animation.

Music is good errie and suitable for the game, though maybe something a bit more pumped up could have been used.

The game was never completed, and the reason is currently unknown to GTW why exactly. The game had every reason to be well recieved and a good game. No problems here.

Knowledge of how far the game actually got too in terms of percentage, is unknown also.

A bit of trivia too for old readers of Commodore Zone, the moonscape bitmap on the right of the game actually featured in a demo called "Red Moon" by Jon Woods (See Colony), where the moonscape zoomed into. Not related to the game though, but the game was used  

An awesome preview, unfortunatly not an awesome full game…

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/apollo-14/
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Aptitude  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Arkanoid V1  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Arkanoid V1
1987 Firebird

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Jake Simpson
Graphics: Jake Simpson
Sound: N/A

What do we have here you ask?… Well, a little while before Ocean Software grabbed the rights to Arkanoid, Firebird were looking to publish the game.

Developer for Lynnsoft, Jake Simpson had spent some time producing a conversion of Arkanoid, and got a working demo together which was pretty good. Originally Jake had only produced the game as a trainer for himself so he could play Arkanoid down the pub better. He showed it to Lynnsoft and they approached Firebird to publish it.

At the time however, there was a legal battle going on between Atari and Taito. Atari was suing Taito over Arkanoid, saying that it was a rip off of their Breakout game. Atari looked like they were going to win, and Firebird had approached Atari as a result. Atari agreed to Firebird’s approach, as long as they won the lawsuit. Sadly they lost, and so Firebird and Lynnsoft lost the rights to convert the game fully.

The game as a result became lost to time, and it wasn’t until 2009 when GTW preserved all of Matt Young’s C64 disks from his Lynnsoft days that the remains were discovered. What remains is a playable conversion, not quite complete… but plenty to look at. The game lacks polish compared to the final version by Ocean which would have no doubt had been polished had Atari won the battle. The game differs a fair amount to the Ocean conversion, most notably in the way that Lynnsoft’s conversion was full screen compared to 2/3rds which Ocean’s version took up.

Jake mentioned that there was a BASIC program that was written to build all the levels, but sadly this hasn’t been located at present. But at the very least we can present you with a glimpse of something rather special and surprising!…. It certainly was a surprise to Richard Hewison  

The game is quite hard to play. Press F1 on the title page to switch the joystick/keyboard control. Holding fire makes the bat go faster, pushing up launches the ball. If you get laser, its space to fire.

Check out a piece of history!

Contributions: Jake Simpson, Matt Young, Jason Kelk, "enthusi"

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/arkanoid-v1/
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Armageddon  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Armageddon
2003 Creators

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Tom Willy Wilhelmsen
Graphics: Vanja Utne
Sound: Vanja Utne

Armageddon is a fine looking sideways SEU created by Creators and was in development from around 1995 to 2003.

We all know Vanja’s artwork very well from the demos that she has worked on and impressed many with, and Armageddon is lucky enough to grace her artwork actually in a game.

Certainly, checking out the two previews which we have here, the game is an oil painting with its quite stunning backdrops.

The previews themselves do not really have any playable elements to them, with no enemies to shoot/avoid, but you can control the main ship across the two terrains until they loop round again. These particialar previews are 20 line horizontal scrollers with colourmaps scrolled as well. This according to Tom was re-written due to R-Time optimisation and different screen splitting. Some of the levels were intended to contain parallaxscrolling amounst other effects. Apparently these were implemented. The screen had to be split up (on the scrolling part of hte screen) to allow for sprite multiplexing. Double buffering and page swapping together with splits like that ensured that an entire rewrite was neessary.

So the previews released use the old source code, but sadly after the breakup of Creators the game went on the wayside. Tom mentions that he is the only person with the source code, and one day may finish the job.

Maybe we may get to see more of the game in the future, but we do hope that Tom will finish things off, as it does look superb even in its early stages, so the newer version must be superb!

It’s certainly worth looking at to see what could have been!

Contributions: Tom Willy Wilhelmsen

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/armageddon/
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Armalyte 2 (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Armalyte 2
1990 Thalamus

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Dan Phillips
Graphics: Robin Levy

Back on our screens in 1988, we were graced by one of the greatest SEU’s of all time. Armalyte was released with an almighty impact, shaping the way all sideways SEU’s should be on the C64. 

With the first game’s big success, a sequel was inevitable and work was set on a sequel to be released in late 1989/early 1990. Again being programmed by the immaculate Cyberdyne Systems, a few ideas were placed. The main ship was to be more colourful, the aliens more intelligent and a power-up shop was to be included too. It was to borrow more from Salamander too! 

The game was to feature around 6 levels in total, and just the one player to fit in all the improvements. Flickering problems from the first game were to be removed and other various improvements. Unfortunatly, Cyberdyne Systems were contracted out to System 3, and after getting to work on projects for System 3, such as Deadlock and Last Ninja 3. Armalyte 2 was shelved. 

Dan Phillips of ex-Cyberdyne Systems, contacted GTW with proof of the game’s existance. Dan submitted to GTW a series of previews which were made to demonstrate ideas which were put on the table. As well as the main ideas above being demonstrated, the last game’s levels used as demonstration have had colour splits placed onto them and the weaponry on one of the previews is awesome. As well as this, you can experience the all new ship itself and some new enemies knocked together by Robin Levy. 

So thanks to Dan Phillips, you can now experience what was Armalyte 2 on the C64, or at least part of what it was to be. The remains of a potential new king to the throne of best C64 SEU. Also check out “Creator Speaks” for the full story on Armalyte 2 as extracted from Zzap 64′s interview with Cyberdyne Systems.

In 2010, GTW backed up a number of disks from John Kemp and Robin Levy, and on one of the disks was a music demo from a guy called Bjorn. The music was intended for Armalyte 2, but it seems that the music was by Prosonix! The main tune was only infact released recently! (http://csdb.dk/release/?id= 95768) . We are not sure exactly who Bjorn was!

We have also found some sprite files which we have uploaded into the main download file.

From the disk label, it seems that the game could well have been called "Maglyte" had it been finished.

---

About the game (As detailed in Zzap 64)

"Well, this time its one player: I say definately for today and tomorrow but when Robin Levy gets back it might change to two. The weaponry is going to be the biggest change of all, theres going to be a shop at the start. Eight-way moving missiles are included along with the main weapons from Nemesis, Salamander and Armalyte. One of the things we haven't got is Ripple Lasers from Salamander and speed-ups. 

We're not into the idea of speed ups as you can get into a Delta syndrome where you pick them up, start whizzing all around the screen and then suddenly run out. It comes to something when you've got to get speedups to survive: speed-ups are probably the worst thing ever in coin-ops as you start off slow. 

Just thinking up ideas for new weapons and aliens is tricky, the aliens will have a lot more character about them, a bit more intelligence and it'll be a lot easier to play. We might have a sheild level reduced with each hit instead of death on contact and the idea of recharging batteries might be implemented. 

There's more detail on the main ship and it might have animation with blinking lights. To avoid confusion we might make it all smaller and the main ship a different colour. We've also got diagonal bounce lasers now as well as the standard Armalyte lasers. We weren't too pleased with the flicker in the original lasers, so we've got solid laser fire now. 

One of the criticisms we had regarding Armalyte was the predictability of the fixed attack waves. For the sequel we're thinking of having up to four styles of attack wave, one of three styles being chosen by the computer at the start of the game with the fourth user if you complete the game and it wraps around. It'll be a random thing for the aliens: obviously it won't work on the gun turrets but it makes for a different game each tme. 

One thing we didn't like about Armalyte was the alien bullets, the way they are fired. It didn't allow for flexibility. Now we've got several different types: bullets which home in on you for six blocks, semi-intelligent ones and guns that track you around the screen. 

"With all this mega-firepower, are the motherships going to be tougher to compensate?" 

We're going to use two or three complete character sets for use in each level (as opposed to one in the original), with one whole character set for each mothership. They're going to be easier to learn to defeat: learn and stay alive tactics as opposed to learn and die in the first game." 

"The same number of levels again?" 

There's six levels at the moment but in Armalyte we had seven at first and then that went to eight, so I don't know. Each level like the original has 32 screens in all but this time we can slow down the speed of the scroll, controlling it to increase the screen width. We can stop a background while giving the illusion of scroll with moving stars- the snake aliens in part-one used up four screens. In this we can use just one screen. We hope Armalyte 2 will have cheat modes: type in something to get little extras, earn cash or a set weapon pick-up - we don't know yet. 

We haven't had any major problems in the last few days: its just going through routines, touching them up, cutting down on raster time. We've managed to decrease the code size for each level by 45%, so it'll be bigger, look better and play better. 

 "I gather you're planning some special game presentation?" 

Yes, we're hoping to put something of 16-bit quality as a demo on the disk version but it does depend on time, memory and disk space. It all adds to the value for money of the game along with decent endings. That really narks us off, bad endings - our end sequence will be spectacular! 132 sprites on screen! 12-level starfield scroll in multiple directions! 37,000 asteroids coming at you! A playable end sequence! Or how about an intelligent improvisation; an end sequence where it makes up its own end! (At this point the interview got a tad silly. Moving swiftly on!) 

"Isn't it difficult to work on the project without the game designer to hand?" 

At the moment its a bit tricky to do anything with Armalyte 2 without Robin as he's fully into the game design. Basically we've been streamlining it until Robin comes back. The editors are the main thing we needed to change as they didn't work that well, they're difficult to use and only Robin can use them. Every now and then Robin suggests some tings for the game design which we try to implement. 

As for the 16-bit conversion of Armalyte 2, we haven't seen anything from Arc Developments yet. So far they've got the scroller and thats about it although Paul Walker, the project's graphic artist has asked me for statistics data on the ship movement."

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/armalyte-2/
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Armalyte V1  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Cyberdyne Systems burst onto the scene with their amazing debut game “Armalyte”. This horizontally scrolling shoot ‘em up was one of the finest on the Commodore 64, combining fantastic graphics with some very tough gameplay. As Games That Weren’t already shows, the sequel did not make it to completion. But this is all about what Armalyte was like BEFORE it was released.

First of all, it wasn’t always called Armalyte. The project was originally called Starburst, then it became Manowar and finally Magnox. (Magnox was also the name of another unfinished Cyberdyne project). Armalyte was finally chosen, from the name of a heavy metal song. However this was prone to being mis-spelled, even by the team themselves – the first demo version calls itself “Armalite” (the name of a gun manufacturer) in the scrolling message

The graphics underwent many changes too. The initial style was metallic and bas-relief. This was followed by a second crystalline style, which Robin Levy was unhappy with. Finally he settled on a mixture of organic and metallic elements that became the final overall style.

The three demos available to download show this progression in style, and also contain some fascinating glimpses of different sprites – for the main ship, and the enemies. While none of them are a complete game, they do give an indication of how much the project changed as it neared completion.

Robin Levy gives some more inside information in the Creator Speaks section, talking about how he created the graphics. And Retro Gamer issue 36 from Imagine Publishing features a “Making Of Armalyte” article showing off design sketches and the demo versions.

Finally, Jason Kelk suggested to also add the extra images from the Hunters Moon original disk to this archive, as it includes some graphics which may have been meant for Armalyte, including the Xenophobia screen by Robin.

Case closed…

Contributions: Robin Levy, Jason Kelk, Frank Gasking

---

Robin Levy speaks about work on the early version of Armalyte...

"One of the reasons it went through so many re-designs is that I was learning how to draw graphics as I went and as such was always bettering myself whenever I did something new, the main exception to this was some of the bosses - in particular the final one - I don't know WHAT I was thinking when I did that abomination!

Anyway, whenever I did do something slightly better I had to go back and make sure that those changes and techniques where implemented in earlier graphics- I'm a fussy sod and wanted a level of consistency throughout. Had I spent some more time purely on the graphics I think I could have ironed out some of the more ropey graphics, samey motherships and colour schemes that didn't work on newer 64s.

For sprite animations I used a utility called Steve Beat's Sprite Editor. It was a very powerful tool that let you animate ranges in a variety of ways, save specific frames, see how sprites looked joined together or overlaid as well as define complex layouts that was handy for designing the larger bad guys.

For bitmap images, which were primarily things like loading screens, I used a cheap but brilliant package called VIDCOM, which made you manually handle multi-colour assignment. It took a while to pick up and needed some technical know-how to use right; but it saved all that messing around you invariably did with "smart" programs like Koala Painter and Art Studio when it came to their dynamic allocations of the multi-colours (which usually got in the way of doing the job right)."

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/armalyte-v1/
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Armer Humin  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A bizarre Breakout clone from a guy called Oliver Möller.
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Arthema  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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A really wonderful game produced by Timsoft, whom are well renound for their impressive C64 games in the late 90′s.

The game is a polished single screen platformer, where you control a little blob with a hi-res overlay, collecting all the objects on the screen before progressing to the next level. You have the odd creature to avoid though, so jumping and moving at the right moment is crucial.

You get all the bits really, the snazzy introduction, the cool titles and the music (Created by the great Moog). Everything in the making of a popular game.

The preview comes with 4 levels, which look great to the eye, and the game plays well. Its nothing spectacular in terms of playability, but its certainly one of the better unreleased games on the C64.

Did I say unreleased?… well, it wouldn’t be in GTW otherwise. Unfortunatly, it is in GTW for that exact reason. No full game exists anywhere at the moment of this nice little gem, though recent information has surfaced from comankh that the game was actually completed, but never released because of the dying C64 market in 1995.

Robert Kan recently mentioned the following about Arthema:

"Arthema – our best and last game. Unfortunatly, despite the fact that publisher has bought the game from us, this game was never released. We hope to be able to release it in some form in future. This game was created under label of the best polish C64 game development team – Inflexion Development."

So it seems that a full version does infact exist and now we are trying to find out more and see if we can obtain either the full game to share with you, or find out more about the plans for this complete game.

A stunning preview, but encouraginly one with a full version maybe around the corner…

Contributions: Comankh, Philip Eicher

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/arthema/
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Arwag  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Arwag
199? Megastyle

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Ruben Spaans
Graphics: Ruben Spaans
Sound: N/A

Arwag was to be an Ultima based game written by Ruben Spaans (aka Scroll/Megastyle) which was shaping up to be pretty good. Ruben explains more about the game:

"A role-playing game similar to the older Ultima games. It was in the early stages, but fully playable. I don’t think I’ve sent this to anyone on the c64 or told anyone, as it was made very late in my c64 career. I plan to put it up on my website soon. (I actually made a PC version which was 95% done.)"

Very kindly Ruben has dug out the game to share with others, and you can see just how much promise it had for yourselves. Included with the download is a small text file with keys to use in the game. Be warned that it can crash sometimes as it is an early stage preview, but there is enough there to allow you to explore and play the game a little.

This was all there ever was of the game, only the PC version as Ruben has mentioned got further. Ruben moved onto pastures new and the game was canned, and will unfortunately never be completed! Thanks to Slator for the tidied up version of the game!

Case closed!

Contributions: Jazzcat, Ruben Spaans, Slator

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/arwag/
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Astro Mine  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Astromine
1996 Visualize

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Jon Wells
Graphics: Jon Wells
Sound: Jon Wells

Astromine is another brainchild of C64 maestro, Jon Wells, and one of my personal favourites too along with City Bomber.

This can only be described as an old skool C64 game in the style of many classic C64 games. We have a mix of Manic Miner, Pitfall 2, Nodes Of Yesod and various snippets of other classics. The whole collaboration was to turn into Astromine, which put you in control of an astronaught called Ned. Ned, in his hi-res glory, could jump, swim, climb, slide, shoot, crawl and all sorts of other neat things to add to his flexibility.

Essentially, Astromine was to be a multipart game with many different styles of gameplay combined into one single load. One level would be very similiar to a screen from Manic Miner, with all sorts of features such as a sliding pole, water and teleports. Another level would take you to a different stage of the game, where you could be swimming underwater, flying with a jetpac or even flying a ship around. To be honest, i’m not entirely sure of the EXACT plan for the game.

What I tell you here is the result of a set of long phone conversations dating back to around 1997, where all these ideas were being bounced around. A very enthusastic Jon was very adimant that he had something very special here, and the variety would blow people away. The ideas certainly got me excited, and I was sold.

Sadly, Astromine was one of Jon’s last attempts to get some software support, but after the failure of Supportware… Jon had no incentive to complete the game, and so it was shelved. A whole array of excellent ideas were lost.

Jon did however release a special 1 level preview, which was the Manic Miner style level I earlier described. This featured superb animation on the main character, and a whole neat array of things to do, such as crawl, teleport and slide. The game also came with some excellent Rob Hubbard style tunes which Jon also composed. Had this game been completed, it could have been a real classic.

It is possible that we will see some more of this game someday, though Jon has also mentioned that this could have ideas used from it for other stuff. So its not known yet if we can release more of the game. A few more levels were done, with some more variety and rumoured to be a little easier to play (The demo was a tad off putting for some with its pixel perfect jumping).

For now we present the demo which many of you have probably played already. Check it out and when you dig into it, you’ll see what a nice little old skool game this was shaping to be. Maybe we’ll see more some day soon…

A piece of classic style gaming…

Contributions: Jon Wells

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/astromine/
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Astrodome  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Astrodome
1987 Unknown

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Chris Fitzsimons
Graphics: Andie Woodland
Sound: Chris Gair

This unfinished Sanxion clone was being created by Chris Fitzsimons, Chris Gair and Andie Woodland in the summer of 1987, but unfortunatly unfinished was how it was left and stated in this preview.

A typical old-school sideways SEU in the mould of Sanxion, with very Hubbard-esq music, is not actually that bad and typical of its time. Though not up to the same class as Sanxion, its good and scrolling is smooth.

The main ship is obviously inspired by Sanxion also, and moves along at a steady pace. Moving the craft left and right can increase and decrease the scroll speed. The craft cannot shoot, nor collide with any of the various enemies which attack in various attack formations.

The map simply loops and the music plays, and that is it.

The game never progressed any further, as the project was declared dead basically in the release of this preview. It is not cracked, and possibly has been released by the team themselves. However, according to Chris, there is another version of the game somewhere which is earlier, but actually features 8 layers of parallax.

According to Chris, this demo was made to test the parallax scrolling and block mapping. The alien waves were mocked up just for testing.

The game got scrapped early on, and no publisher was ever sadly approached.

A nice Sanxion clone, left for dead many moons ago…

Contributions: Jason Kelk, Chris Fitzsimons

---

Chris Fitzsimons speaks to GTW about work on Arbitrator...

"This was badly done demo which is either early or there is a problem with the image colours because I don’t remember the green.

It was done to test the parallax scrolling and block mapping, the alien waves were just knocked up to get a rough feel for the game.

There was a later demo, more incomplete but showing about 8 layers of parallax."

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/astrodome/
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Atlantian  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Coming soon...
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Aviator Arcade 2  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Babylon  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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I remember seeing this game after recieving a load of old disks from a company called Shareware Plus. This was one of the many previews I found hiding away, classed as PD/Shareware. Now the name has been suggested to be Babylon by one crew, but actually the game never had a proper name, so Babylon is kind of a working title, as was Paralax game which was given when Onslaught released it.

Anyway, this unnamed game is an awesome little preview of a game which owes a lot to the Mario games, Mayhem and maybe a bit of Castlevania?

This neat little platformer works in similiar fashion to Mario, by busting blocks with your head and squashing some characters by jumping on them. Collecting a special treasure chest will allow you to throw fire tourches at your enemies.

Starting with a cool Uridium style title screen, with large scrolling letters (Spelling "Demo").. The game has no name, even though the preview has been named Babylon. This is not the real name.

Graphics are neat and impressive, with some cool parallax later in the preview, and some Mayhem-esq style lightnining effects. Scrolling is very smooth horizontal scrolling, with an easy to control character.

There is no sound, and only one level in this preview, but it is likely that the game made it much further… The amount of detail in just this one level is brilliant, so surely Kopido got a bit more of it done before it was scrapped for whatever reason?

Well, it seems not… the game only really got to this stage in its life as you see here. The programmer gave up on the game due to asking for too much money, and no publisher wanting to touch the game. Deekay/Crest wanted to ressurect the game recently, but it was found that sadly all the work disks were lost. Xayne/Crest was to do the music.

Stunning platformer, small… but stunning…

Contributions: Christian Widmann, Jazzcat

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/babylon/
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Baccy`s Nightmare  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Baccies Nightmare
1998 The Dreams

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Doc Bacardi
Graphics: Zaphod
Sound: Mod

Originally part of a demo, Baccie’s Nightmare is a good example of Doom on the C64. Although, no guns or enemies to shoot, it demonstrates the running around rooms at reasonable speed.

This clone, like MOOD, features some very blocky graphics, which can be compensated for the game its actually trying to be.

Technically, its not mean’t to be a game, though built in the style that it should have been a game. Even this clone was cracked and spread separately, which is what you can download here. The preview even has an end sequence which can be viewed.

GTW knows that this never progressed further and was never mean’t to anyway. This is the case closed on this game, and is in GTW purley for the fact that it has the basic building blocks of a game, with end sequence which is not a complete game.

You could say a game scrapped without The Dreams knowing it maybe  

A unfinished game that wasn’t meant to be a game…

Contributions: The Dreams

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/baccies-nightmare/
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Bak Pakker  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1994 EBES

Status: Preview, Findability: 1/5
Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

Electric Boys didn’t just have the main plans to do games such as Flashback or Defensive, but EBES did have other plans which originally were told to the public through the disk covermount of Commodore World, which EBES imported for UK readers.

Bak Pakker was one of these games which EBES were to take and update. Including amazing new graphics, music, super smooth scrolling and attackwaves.The plan was to include multi-hires sprites and amazing graphical backdrops.

Nothing much else was planned and in the end it was all but words as EBES fell to the fate of no support, as did many trying UK companies.

All that exists today is the original game which Russ Michaels had planned to convert, an unofficial version of Jetpac which roams the internet. This preview has an added note, mentioning the game’s plan.

The game was also known in some EBES notes as Super Jetpac – Bak Pakker could well have been the working title for the game.

To give Russ full credit for his efforts (Which was immense at the time), it was a shame that EBES did not make it.

A good idea, but an idea it will all but remain… Case closed…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/bak-pakker/
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Balls of Scrolling Thunder  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Balls Of The Scrolling Thunder
2006 Doynax

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Doynax
Graphics: Doynax (?)
Sound: N/A

Balls of the Blazing Thunder was a superb vertical scroller which was done for a SHUMPS competition we believe, and was never intended to be finished. However the game started out as a thread on Lemon 64, with the developer detailing things as follows:

"I’ve spent my weekend trying to write a proof of concept demo which tries to makes the tiles taller than 8 pixels without being too intrusive (i.e. suitable for games).

The idea is that with 16-pixel tiles there’s only half has much memory to shift around when scrolling, it also leaves plenty of free space for VSP and linecrunching without inadvertently displaying the sprite pointers. Having twice as much tile graphics to play with can’t be wrong either.

Yet the idea is fairly straightforward, so I figured someone would’ve done it before if it truly were as useful as it seems. But so far I haven’t really encountered anything fatal.

And it’s my intention to support it smoothly, you’ll just have to give me some time to come up with a better demo  

Multiplexing shouldn’t really be a problem since the raster code uses high priority NMIs, leaving the game free to use the IRQs as usual without disturbing anything. Vertical scrolling may require a bit of effort though (nothing technically hard mind you, just plenty of details).

Filling the "lost" 2 kB shouldn’t be too hard for most projects, especially considering where it’s placed. I’d say the main drawback is that you lose the ability to do other stable raster effects mid-screen, and that it uses all four timers. And restore NMIs will screw up the display (there’s isn’t much I can do about that), which I suppose may be a show-stopper for some.

One interesting point is that the vertical scrolling is actually double buffered by only using even/odd lines of the same video matrix. So if I actually had any colors to scroll it’d be trivial to add color ram scrolling =)"

Then later on….

"I recently started coding on a shoot’em up, and it’s about time I sought some help for the graphics and design. 

So far I’ve done a bit of ground work on the ‘game engine’ side of things, including a fairly decent multiplexor and large parts of the actor system.

Design-wise I really only know what I want to achieve technically, plus my old dream of porting SWIV to the C64 (which was sadly crushed when someone got there before me). 

Graphically we’re talking about a bunch of standard multicolor sprites. And a slightly tweaked character mode for the backgrounds, so 256 8×16 tiles with color-per-char scrolling.

As for the scope I don’t intend to create the next big thing (TM) but rather take a month or two to develop an initial demo, and then see where it takes us. In the worst case at least it’s an entry for next years crap game compo, right? "

We also learn that Icon / Remember came up with the name of the game. We believe that it got released at a SHUMPS compo, but then was sadly forgotten about. A huge shame.

Sources exist and can be downloaded here, but it is a huge shame as it was feeling great and up there with the likes of SWIV as a frantic C64 blaster.

But as the source exists, is it possible that someone could pick this up and finish? Thanks to Slator for the fixed file!

Here is its GTW entry anyway and a case closed

Contributions: Slator

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/balls-of-the-scrolling-thunder/
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Basketball  (Preview V4)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Coming soon..
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Battle  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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199? Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

Interesting title for this GTW… This is the beginnings of a RPG style game where you control multiple characters. This is a very early preview, and it only seems to be one single screen with some very limited character interaction. Even the game name might be a working name, we are not sure.

From what we can see of the preview, it looks extremely promising with some great graphics, animation and generally a good feel about it. If maybe it had a bit more depth in the preview, we’d get a better indication of how this might have turned out. As it stands, its way too early to tell.

One interesting fact is that the game features display panels which are based on Newcomer, so could this have been a battle scenario from the game which was dropped?…. or was this a game in its own right?…

Well, we can confirm that this is infact a very early preview of Newcomer, and so there is nothing actually to find! So another one bites the dust!

Case closed!

Contributions: Paul Koller

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/battle-2/
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Beep Boy  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Bleep Boy
1997 Unknown

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Martin Kristensen
Graphics: Jesper Larsen, Martin Kristensen
Sound: Milosz Ignatowski

A recently released preview of a game which was sadly scrapped back in 1997. A shame really, as it looks and plays very well…

Bleep boy puts you in the control of a very cute yellow geezer, who shoots his way past robots and other creatures to pass each stage.

The level is awesome in design, and looks and plays just like a console platformer. If complete, i’m sure that this would be one of the top C64 platformers, just on its graphics alone  

With its playability, it isn’t original, but it just made a change to see something like this once more. Sadly it seems it will never be complete.

The game looks to be fairly complete in the way of its physics and everything else, it just seems to be levels which are missing and a little bit extra to the gameplay. This really is as far as the game ever got.

The game was based on an engine developed by Martin Kristensen to demonstrate that good Hi-res graphics could be done on a C64 without any colour clash. This was in the form of Cave Wizard, and Martin gives more details in Creator Speaks on that page. The game also shares the engine with Block Man.

Nothing to find now, and nothing else to expect. Check out a preview which had so much promise.

Case closed.

Contributions: Ramos/Samar/HVSC Crew


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/bleep-boy/
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Behemoth  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1989 Walking Circles
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Carleton Handley
Graphics: Carleton Handley
Sound: N/A

Behemoth was to be a kind of Armalyte clone for a budget label to pay some bills at Walking Circles. When questioned, the game’s developer Carleton Handley had the following to say:

“Our C64 work from Domark dried up as they moved on to the Amiga etc. At that time Walking Circles was a company of 6 people. 3 programmers, 2 artists and an accountant so we didn’t have the staff or cash to do anything massive. Armalyte was one of my favourite games at the time and there were a few budget knock offs out there.

We decided to do one of those as it’d only be about 6 weeks work. We had a couple of levels going but something else came along (I can’t remember what, probably some stuff with Psygnosis which led to the end of Walking Circles) and worked stopped, never to be started again.

I’m still surprised nobody has used the name Behemoth for a game, I think it’s a great title! Maybe I’ll do one soon.”

Sadly the demise of the C64 as a viable platform was the main reason why the game never got finished off for the likes of Codemasters, Zeppelin or Alternative software.

Carleton mentioned to GTW that the remains of the game were around somewhere still, and that we would be able to put them on the website if found. Well, in 2015 – that time came!

We helped Carleton preserve all of the source code to the game, which has 3 unfinished levels in total, which you can check out here for the first time.  Carleton has very kindly said that we can include the original source code too, so here it is in the download!

Overall it was shaping up very nicely, and could have been a good solid budget game if completed.  A huge shame that it never quite made it.

A great finding and a huge shame that it never quite made it.

Contributions: Carleton Handley


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/behemoth/
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Biff  V1  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1989 Zeit Corp

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Michael Ware
Graphics: Michael Ware
Sound: Unknown

It may come as something of a surprise, but it was recently revealed by Michael Ware (of Warhawk fame) that he was originally working on a conversion of Biff back in the day under his Proteus Developments label.

Michael was given the task of converting the Spectrum game to the C64 (or may have just been given the brief to go and produce it) and spent two sleepness days getting something together – before losing interest and the project gathering dust.  Later in 1993, Chris Walsh was given the task of converting the Spectrum version for Beyond Belief and the game got released eventually.

It was in recent years though that Michael dug out some disks which reminded him of the development that he did many moons ago.  In 2013, Michael backed up the disks that he found with the various bits that he did and managed to recover two previews showing a controllable main character, some collisions and a large map area to navigate around.   It’s pretty neat, even in its early incarnation – and in comparison to the completed game – makes great use of the C64′s strength of colour palette.  Had Michael completed the game – it could well have been a very strong Dizzy-like game which made use of the C64′s strengths.

What is interesting is the date mark for the latter preview – which is November 1989…. This suggests that Biff was originally developed back then, before the days of Beyond Belief (which we believe was established in 1991 according to the Beyond Belief article in Commodore Force)

It seems that Biff had a similar development path to Bod Squad (which was originally meant to be a Digital Magic game rather than a Zeppelin title).  Maybe the Spectrum version was finished in 1989, but never released until Jim Scott picked it up in 1993.   Well, Michael has said that the game was developed for a company called Zeit Corp, who were mostly a Spectrum based company.  They seem to have connections with the Fun School games and Neverending Story 2 – which both Chris Walsh and Mark Healey were involved in…. the eventual developers of Biff on the C64 in 1993.   Hopefully Mark or Chris will shed more light on who Biff was meant for …. was it meant to be for Codies?

Anyway – this is a nice surprise to salvage and preserve, and a nice preview too!  Check it out!

Contributions: Michael Ware


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/biff-v1/
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Bimz  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Black Bandit  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Black Bandit
1988 Monster GFX

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Robert V Torp
Graphics: Kristian K Larsen, Wayne Billingham
Sound: Bjorn Moos

A surprise finding for GTW of a title which we know very little about.

A bundle of disks were recently sent in 2007 to GTW from Wayne Billingham, and on these disks came this very game. A preview of a fairly complete looking title called "The Power of Black Bandit". Thanks to Skeletor for packing it up for GTW.

The game is a kind of Cauldron/Metal Warrior/Tusari type of game, or at least it reminds me quite heavily of those games for some reason. You control Craigh Blades who jumps around quite happily – but we’re not sure what else. We sadly know nothing about the game’s story at present.

We do however have credits, and this seems to have been a game done in Norway/Sweden. Wayne had this to shed on the game…

"While doing Bobby Bounce Back (For dynamic developments I think, with Chris Walsh)…..they were a new startup, getting games worked on ready for release (which never happened). 

I think they basically lined up peopple to work together, on the promise of releasing game and getting royalties..I think in all the time I worked on Bobby Bounce Back I got about 10quid for xmas. I met them for about 10 minutes at a computer show in london (met Chris for a few seconds…we sat down to wait for him, and he couldn’t find us..). 

Anyway.. 

They sent me a demo and asked if I could spruce up the artwork..but it didn’t get any further than that… (to be honest, I don’t think it was very good)…

I think dynamic developments vanished, though I’m sure the people are likely to still be “in the industry”.."

This particular demo seems quite big, and really it doesn’t seem like much more was required to finish it off. But the question remains about what happened to the complete game and does one exist?

As an additional extra, the preview comes with some graphic files as we found on one of Wayne’s disks. He did indeed start some graphics, which you can view by loading the panel file which is on the disk. This loads up in Firebird’s Graphic Editor, and gives a glimpse of some of the enhancements Wayne was attempting to make to the game.

It is not a fantastic game, but it is a nice title to find and preserve in GTW. Hopefully you will have fun exploring it, and in the meantime we hope to find out a lot more about this title… Maybe you know the developers we have listed?

Do you know more about this game?

Contributions: Skeletor

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/black-bandit/
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Blast  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1988 Backroom Software
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Steve Dunn
Graphics: Steve Dunn
Sound: Various

Steve Dunn did a few fair titles on the C64, but also had a few interesting unfinished/unreleased titles under his Backroom Software label.

Blast was one of these titles which was a sort of Warhawk clone in its early stages with some basic backgrounds and enemy patterns. Also feature some various mixed music and fonts from various sources it seems.

Unfortunately Steve did not recall much about the game, but it was possible that the game was taken to Elite or Grandslam for evaluation, as Steve was asked to do a C64 conversion of Space Harrier (We’re not sure if 1 or 2, hence both company names).

Gaz Spence makes a good case that the game could also be an early beta of Zone Z.  Similar engine, but was it the same game?

It’s not a bad little game, not very playable and could well have been a good shooter. Steve later decided to leave the games industry and do business software programming, which he continues to do today.

As for Blast, nothing more was ever done and this is pretty much it!…. Never completed as there were no takers for the game.

Case closed!

Contributions: Gaz Spence

---

Steve Dunn talks about work on Blast:

“I can’t remember many details on “Blast” as I shortly gave up games after that for a few years, only to return to writing business software back in the 90’s (to which I’m still doing).  I can’t remember who it was for, but it was almost complete except for difficult tuning.  I do remember meeting Activision at the end of that game where they wanted me to do the conversion of Space Harrier, but I didn’t take it as I thought a C64 conversion would be rubbish (and it was!).

Just out of interest, I used to live just down the road from “Orlando” (aka Nick Pelling).  He’s got some great stories on the good old days, especially when he met at the Zzap offices with Jeff Minter and Archer MacLean where they had code-offs!  He’s now doing smart security camera software.”


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/blast/
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Bleep Boy  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1997 Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Martin Kristensen
Graphics: Jesper Larsen, Martin Kristensen
Sound: Milosz Ignatowski

A recently released preview of a game which was sadly scrapped back in 1997. A shame really, as it looks and plays very well…

Bleep boy puts you in the control of a very cute yellow geezer, who shoots his way past robots and other creatures to pass each stage.

The level is awesome in design, and looks and plays just like a console platformer. If complete, i’m sure that this would be one of the top C64 platformers, just on its graphics alone 🙂

With its playability, it isn’t original, but it just made a change to see something like this once more. Sadly it seems it will never be complete.

The game looks to be fairly complete in the way of its physics and everything else, it just seems to be levels which are missing and a little bit extra to the gameplay. This really is as far as the game ever got.

The game was based on an engine developed by Martin Kristensen to demonstrate that good Hi-res graphics could be done on a C64 without any colour clash. This was in the form of Cave Wizard, and Martin gives more details in Creator Speaks on that page. The game also shares the engine with Block Man.

Nothing to find now, and nothing else to expect. Check out a preview which had so much promise.

Case closed.

Contributions: Ramos/Samar/HVSC Crew


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/bleep-boy/
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Blob  (Preview 3)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Block Man 64  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Blockman
1997 Unknown

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Martin Kristensen
Graphics: Jesper Larsen, Martin Kristensen
Sound: Jens Christian Huus

Another good looking platform game, in its early stages.

Blockman is very similiar to "Bleep Boy" which is also in the archives, and is built using the same engine as "Bleep Boy", though cosmetically the game is completly different. Actually both games are based on an engine developed originally for Cave Wizard, which was done to prove that the C64 could handle Hi-res graphics without the colour clash like on a Spectrum.

The graphics are very Mayhem’esq, with a lot of colour and cool design. There is some sound, which seems to be distorted, so i’m not sure if this is just the emulator doing this.

The level is a little unfinished in the preview that we have, but this was all that was ever done. Sadly interest was lost, and the game was cancelled.

To find out more about how the game came about and what happened, check out the Creator Speaks page for Cave Wizard.

Sadly it is case closed for this one!


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/blockman/
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Blood 2  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Bolo 2  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Bolo 2
199? First Blood

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

What we have here is what can only be described as a Bomberman clone, mixed with the classic Atari Combat game. Though the game here feels more to be related with Bomberman, with the style of shooting (Or dropping mines) to cause bomberman style explosions to kill the opposition.

The tanks are steered using left and right, and up on the joystick to go forward. Pressing fire results in dropping a mine.

Well, the game itself is a nice idea… but from playing the preview it seems a little lacking in the way of powerups, but maybe this will be something included in the final release. The control method is slightly tricky, with it being a tad over sensitive. The dropping of mines is simple, with a very effective bomberman explosion, but you need to move quick to get out the way, as they are large explosions.

The game looks as if its a 2 player only game, which does cut down the options of playability with this game, more than increase them. Not everyone will be able to get a fellow computer player to play the game with them, so thus they won’t get much chance to play the game properly. Maybe some sort of AI computer player would have been cool as an addition.

Graphically, its fairly plain on the game screens… but its early days here, and there are at least some clear tanks with nice explosion animations to boot. The introduction screens are fine, with some neat digi music added.

The music in the actual game is old music (Well, i’ve heard it before somewhere, along with the Last Ninja 2 music in there earlier).

Rumour was that the game was to be distributed by GO64 when completed, but so far nothing of the game has ever appeared. The game is originally a ressurect project from the early 90′s, which was meant to be released a few years back.

Quite addictive, unfortunatly not complete…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/bolo-2/
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BOMB (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Bomb
199? Chris West

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Chris West
Graphics: Tony West
Sound: Wally Beben, David Whittaker

Now if there were a sequel you could never have imagined existed, let alone known was started, then its the long awaited sequel to RISK, the excellent and underrated C64 game by Chris and Tony West. Shocked?… Well, I was certainly when Chris West got in touch with GTW and stunned us with several shots of this excellent sequel as well as the preview to test out.

Chris you may know also did the flawless conversion of Super Space Invaders for Domark back in 1991. Bomb was started just before this time, and way after RISK from 1988.

Chris and Tony started this game long after Edge had closed its doors and originally started this game for fun, and in the hope they could quickly sell it to a company. Unfortunately the game just never got completed, and Chris and Tony went onto other projects. Since then it has gathered dust on Chris’ work disks.

Only one level was ever completed, and already the game looks awesome. It can only be described as a kind of souped up version of Scramble, with its missiles that fly upwards towards your excellently animated ship (Animating to the standard of RISK and similar to TRAN and DEFENSIVE) that fires Defender style lasers and drops its Scramble-like bombs.

Impressive still is the stunning landscapes in the first level, and the explosions of the enemies and your main ship (Ok, I admit, I wasn’t too great at playing the game!  ). If you’ve seen Chris and Tony’s previous work, you will come aquatinted to this high standard of work.

The preview is packaged with the music and SFX from RISK, and has a simple title screen and hi-score to tie it all together. It’s sad that it never quite got finished, but the first level alone is worth checking out. Additionally we have just put in the rare version which has proper lasers that isn’t in the released demo.

Chris tells GTW “It was meant to feel like Scramble as we liked that game as well, but we wanted to bring a little more variety to it, ie some big bosses like in Super Space Invaders, resucing little Boffins again like Risk, and a lot more weapons, of which only coded 3 so far.”

There was plans to have the game finished off, but Chris and Tony disappeared completely and numerous contact attempts failed as we tried to find out more about their plans (as well as trying to get Typhoon Thompson released).  It is very unlikely that the game will ever get completed, and this is therefore all that will ever remain of the game.

Case closed!

Contributions: Chris West

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/bomb/
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Born in Space  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Homebrew
Release Year: 1994
Programmer: Hannes Sommer
Musician: Karl Sommer
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1994 Talentebank
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Hannes Sommer
Graphics: Hannes Sommer
Sound: Karl Sommer

An awesome looking sequel to the great Lion’s series, almost taking the Armalyte crown right away from them. If you have not seen or heard of Lions Of The Universe, then go and grab it and play it in a closed and dark room for a few hours.. its great!

The very strange thing is that this game seems to be next in line to Return Of The Lions, which was not completed.

The preview present is unplayable, but rolls through the game and what was being promised. Some stunning backdrops, sprites and gameplay from the looks of things, taking a step further from the predecessors with scrolling up and down while scrolling right.

Music as usual is great from Karl Sommer , and overall the preview had the making of what looked awesome in terms of C64 SEU’s.

The game was said to have never been completed, apparently due to Cosmos leaving the C64 scene and finding that selling games on the C64 was not too profitable anymore. Leaving games like this to fall onto the scrapheap.

However, thanks to Andreas Millinger, we are shocked to discover that the game was actually reviewed in an issue of 64’er and scored an impressive 9/10. It seems a lot more of the game does actually exist and (hoping that 64’er didn’t review a preview or something) maybe even a full game!  Even more evidence was when Hannes Sommer confirmed himself that the game was completed and actually sold to someone (unfortunately he cannot remember who that is!)  So the game is out there quite remarkably!  We just need to find that someone who brought it!   Hannes is also desperate to see the game again, as he no longer has it either!

Check out the Shots area to see a whole new range of previously unseen screenshots which show some very colourful worlds and baddies. Also check the Magazine Review item for a translation by Andreas of the original review (With link to the scan).   The final game apparently had 4 levels with 2 stages each.

This is very exciting, and now we hope to find something of this game.

Is this a big C64 title about to be found at last?…

Contributions: Andreas Millinger, Jazzcat

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/born-in-space/
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BrotCASTen  (Demo)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Bruce Lee II  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Bugs Bunny  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A rather different early preview of Bugs Bunny – Private Detective has been found on Ash and Dave’s work disks recently.   This was done around 1991 time, and seems to have undergone some major changes that led up to the 1992/93 full game that we saw some years ago.

The map is very different, with different graphics, and the digging element of the game is gone – where you must climb up walls to get around.   No doubt changes were made due to elements not working or Warner not being happy.   It’s a great curiosity worth checking out here along with the full game.


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2016/10/bugs-bunny-early-preview-added/
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Bugs in Buggyland  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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C64 RPG  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Captain Dynamo 2  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Licensed
Release Year: 1993
Developer: Codemasters
Publisher: Codemasters
Programmer: Finlay Munro
Musician: Gerard Gourley
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Captain Dynamo 2
1993 Codemasters

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Finlay Munro
Graphics: Wayne Billingham
Sound: Gerard Gourley

A shock, and a big one … it’s a title which certainly shocked us…. Yet another of the 20 something unreleased games from Codemasters towards the end of the C64′s life has been named as Captain Dynamo 2, the sequel to the naff first game by Ian Gray.

And guess what?… we’ve found it!… Here’s the story…

Developed by Finlay Munro who was behind the various Twilight/Enigma Variations games (Including Kick Off 2 cartridge), this was to be significantly better than the original game. Here is the code

Graphics were provided by Wayne Billingham, who recently came forward as the Mega Twins artist. Wayne informs GTW that this was a game being produced by Duncan Kershaw.

Captain Dynamo 2 is a side scrolling game where you have to defuse bombs in different locations. It’s pretty much similiar to Flimbos Quest and Hawkeye, where you have to travel in two directions to find an object.

The game was cancelled the same time Codemasters pulled out of the C64 scene altogether… and was yet another game from their collection deemed to have been lost forever until now. Finlay has been talking about the game, and he can remember being paid for the game but can’t remember ever recieving a copy of the game or seeing it on the shelves.

Wayne Billingham recently sent GTW a disk with Captain Dynamo 2 written on it. Upon initial reading, the disk was corrupted and only listed graphic files. Still a good finding for GTW, but after passing on the corrupted disk to see if more graphics were locked away on the disk – Skeletor comes back and finds a fully executable preview of the game!… and almost complete too!

The game looks very nice in its late stage – we think all the levels are in place, and there are just a few glitches. It seems only a few tweaks, final level, end sequence and music were needed. But does such a version exist? Finlay isn’t sure – but someday we hope Finlay is to dig out his disks to take a look. A loading screen which was unused was also dug out from Wayne’s Amiga disks (Thanks to Adrian from aGTW for the converting!)

For now, enjoy – and use "1" to skip levels  Also check out the graphic files also on the disk!

A big big finding!… can the full game be found? did it exist?…

Contributions: Wayne Billingham, Finlay Munro, Will Morton, Skeletor, Adrian Simpson

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/captain-dynamo-2/
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Car Racer  (Preview V2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Undefined
Release Year: 199x
Developer: SAMAR
Programmer: Stinger, Samar
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Car Racer
199? SAMAR

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Stinger/Samar
Graphics: Levi & Stinger/Samar
Sound: N/a

A very smooth and nice little racing game at a very early stage.

The game features a Lotus looking red car, that drives along a very smooth rasterbar road. The actual road itself is very detailed, with well animated white lines and pitstop lanes.

The sound is quite basic, with some simple engine sounds and that is it. The game comes with no titles, and the game area features no real details, apart from a half screen display for the driving.

After some waiting, a lead at last for this intriguing racing game.

At first we thought it was Lotus 2 early preview, but it seems that Samar were infact been behind this car racer.

Recently a later version of the game had been released, with a texture mapped road which looks quite impressive for the C64. It’s a little slow, but what do you expect. It seems to have taken a few strides since its original form which has been on GTW for a while now. There are even some 3d wireframes there which look as if they would have featured on the tracks. This version is claimed to be at 20% completion. And it is likely said that Samar will never finish it.

Rafal of Samar got in contact with GTW, and has conducted a special "Creator Speaks" with one of the guys behind the game. It seems the game was done because Stinger simply wanted to see a better car racing game on the C64. It certainly looked like it was on the right tracks, featuring road effects similiar to Lotus 2 on the Amiga.

Rafal also uncovered another rare preview of this game, which actually includes a split screen version of the game with two cars. At the moment they are not separate, but apparently there was a preview that DID have separate controllable cars… but it was sadly lost.

It seems that the game had a lot of ambition, but was a little bit too much to expect from the little humble C64. Who knows. But its a promising preview, sadly that didn’t get very far.

A neat and detailed little racer…

Contributions: Rafal Szyja, Mariusz Rozwadowski, Bartek

----

Ramos (Mariusz Rozwadowski) speaks about work on Collapsar...

Hi Ramos , do you have any info on that "Car racer" they recently added to GTW?

R: I have further development stage.

Why was the game not finished?

R: Because Stinger (Krzysztof Szczech) wanted to finish demos on c64  Game started about 1995 , Gfx was also made by Stringer but car models were created by Levi (Tomasz Lewandowski)

Was the game meant to be commercial?

R: At the beginning it wasn't planned but in case the game was finished it was propable, Stringer started programming it because he wanted just to do better racing game on c64 but he never went back to the project.

What else was planned for the game?

R: menu of course ;-) and more tracks.

What shocked me is textured road in that preview Axelerate revealed  recently.

R: Looking at Stinger's skills this game would be fantastic. It's possible that I gain source code from him or try to talk about getting down and finishing that game.

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/car-racer/
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Cargo  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Licensed
Release Year: 1988
Developer: Firebird
Publisher: Firebird
Programmer: Simon Nicol, Stavros Fasoulas
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1988 Firebird
Status: No Download, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Simon Nicol, Stavros Fasoulas
Graphics: Stavros Fasoulas
Sound: N/A

Cargo was a game which was being developed by Simon Nicol and Stavros Fasoulas under the Ducksoft Development label, and was meant for Firebird Software.

We were first informed about the title (though without a title) by Simon’s friend Said Hassan, who tells GTW64 that Cargo was a title produced in a single night as he watched them code it.

It apparently was to prove a point according to Said, that a budget title could be written overnight.   It had Simon’s starfield in the background, and an Amidar style maze on the top.  There was to be a Vorpal loader and a cast off Hubbard track too – but nothing seems to exist of this.  They may not have quite managed to get the tune included – unless a budding hacker can find it tucked away?

Richard Hewison of The Bird Sanctuary (a tribute site to Firebird) couldn’t recall the title, but suggested that at the time it would have likely gone on the Silverbird label.  There was no adverts for the game it seems though!  Did Simon and Stavros ever even intend to release it?

You can see the elements of Quedex and Delta within the game’s style, but also Simon’s distinctive star field in the background.   It is a neat puzzler where you have to colour in the maps in Painter style, even at this early stage (where there is no sound).

The game looks fairly close to completion – and considering it was done in a night … the game must actually be complete!   If it was intended for Firebird, then we can only assume that the buyout of Telecomsoft meant the end for the game.   We hope to find out more from Simon and Stavros in the future!

For now, check it out!

Contributions: Andrew Fisher, Simon Nicol, Said Hassan


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/cargo/
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Castlepanik  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Cave Wizard  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Licensed
Release Year: 1997
Programmer: Martin Kristensen
Musician: Thomas Bendt
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Cave Wizard
1997 Unknown

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Martin Kristensen
Graphics: Martin Kristensen
Sound: Thomas Bendt

A wonderful looking platform game, which looks very much like a 16-bit console game. Probably in the same league as Mayhem, with a touch of the style used in Yoshi island. It was originally developed to prove that hi-res graphics without colour clash could be done on a C64.

The game plays ok, though a lot is missing, and it seems the game’s creators have emphisised more on the graphics than they have with anything else.

The preview consists of one fairly big map, which you can scroll along, before it gets to a blocked end, where the map may normally loop.

Also within the preview are some lovely coloured hi-res overlayed creatures, including a rather cute large blobby character, all done up in a nice hires overlaid effect.

Although very promising, the game was stopped here and that was the end of it. The developers ran out of steam on the C64, and moved onto pastures new.

Check out Creator Speaks for more info about what happened and how the game was born.

Wonderful eye candy, which sadly remains a walk in a gallery…

---

Martin Kristensen speaks about work on Cave Wizard (From CSDB)...

"This is an early iteration of an experimental hires game I worked on from 1993-1997. This preview was released sometimes in the end of 1994 IIRC, as a proof-of-concept to convince some gfx'ers that it was possible to make a hires game on the C64, which didn't have the colorclash look known from the Speccy.

When I originally got the idea for the project I tried to get some gfx'ers involved, but everyone I talked to were nay-sayers, insisting that it would never work. So I had to try making some graphics on my own, and put together a simple "game" (well, more like a "walk in a gallery" like Games That Weren't called it) to prove them wrong.

It didn't result in very much feedback from interested gfx'ers, but around the time it was released, the Profile team dropped their "Liberation" project, and Kring/CML joined my project instead. We continued to work on it on and off for some years, until our interest for the C64 ran out sometimes in 1997.

A few years later I got the interest for C64'ing back, and considered whether I should continue working on this game, but after looking at the source code I decided not to, since it was way too messy. If I was ever going to give game development on C64 another shot I would prefer to start all over.

Some later iterations of the project, which don't look anything like this, can be found as Beep Boy Preview and Blockman 64 Preview. "


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/cave-wizard/
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CF Adventure  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Championship Run  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Prototype
Release Year: 1991
Publisher: Zeppelin
Programmer: Niels Brouwers
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Championship Run
1991 Zeppelin

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Niels Brouwers
Graphics: Marc Hermans Music
Sound: Unknown
Other: Remi Ebus (Sales)

As well as converting the phenominal Lemmings for the C64, Alter Developments had plenty of other projects which they wanted to bring to the C64. The promise after Lemmings was so much, but we saw so little in the end…

One such title which never saw the light of day as well as Troddlers was the C64 conversion of the Amiga budget title, Championship Run; a racing title released by Zeppelin Games.

Now once Remi Ebus talked to GTW about a particular F1 racing game which got scrapped, and one which was in GTW. Well, this is it!

Never seen before until now, GTW presents an early glimpse of a conversion which sadly never was to be. Alter were assigned the conversion to try and prove themselves to Zeppelin in the hope of getting more contracts in the future for other games.

Enthusism was pretty present in the development, but not enough time was really allocated, and Alter ran out time. Zeppelin canned the project after this, and terminated any chance of Alter doing any work for them.

A shame… but we later got to see Lemmings to prove their worth.

This is a simple F1 racing game which isn’t really playable at present. It is a mere look at what was shaping up. A nice ambitous looking F1 sim for a budget label. Recently HVSC uncovered Adam Gilmore’s unused set of tunes for the game, so we have added the SID file to the archive for you to check out. The tune in the demo is a test tune by Geir Tjelta.

According to Niels, there is a much later version somewhere with cars driving around, but we are yet to see this. One for the future I think!… but good news that this is almost a case closed now…

A rare Zeppelin games title to have a glimpse at…

Contributions: Remi Ebus, Niels Brouwers, HVSC

---

Niels Brouwers speaks to GTW about work on Championship Run...

"Start game, use joystick in port 2 and press fire to start racing. Use the fire button and up/down to shift gears. Game is not completed, but this is the best version I could find (we did have other cars driving around the track as well before the project got canned).

The game was actually a port from a 3d game from Zeppling Games Ltd. They asked us to port this game first before they would be interested in other games of ours. We started happily on this project but we ran out of the time frame that was given to us and eventually Zeppelin cancelled it all together as they lost trust in the game (or us? :-) )."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/championship-run/
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Chaos Lands  (Preview V2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Prototype
Release Year: 1997
Publisher: Everlasting Style
Programmer: Viktor Gergely
Musician: Zyron, Peter Gorgenyi
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Chaos Lands
1997 Everlasting Style

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Viktor Gergely
Graphics: Roland Nagy, Viktor Gergely
Sound: Zyron, Peter Gorgenyi

A nice looking RPG, which seems to promise a lot to the game player in terms of presentation.

I’m not personally a fan of RPG’s, but this should have appealed to those who are fans. Unfortunatly, I didn’t know how to play the game.

The game icons are clear to see, and you can make out your army and other army’s. Music is good and suits the game very well.

Complication may have been the key to this game’s downfall… RPG’s I assume are not easy to create, and a lot of time and effort would have been required to get a good game together.

Seeing as it was 1997 when the game was being produced, games were not selling well at all.. and it could be this reason why the game does not today sit on our game shelves.

Unfortunate, but how much further did the game reach before being scrapped. Well, not much more it seems. Coma abandoned the game some time back, and apart from a new preview which we have now added and a different intro, this seems to be it!

Nice RPG, marred by its timing in the C64 calendar…

Contributions: Jazzcat

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/chaos-lands/
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Charlie Chaplin  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1987 US Gold
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Sean Townsend
Graphics: Martin Calvert
Sound: Mark Cooksey

A game based on the world famous actor… adverts were placed in magazines and it was mentioned around the gaming scene on many occasions in the late 80’s.

Martin Holland was working on the graphics for the Amstrad CPC version for Canvas Software, when apparently US Gold pulled the plug on Canvas’ involvement.  All the data was shipped to Tiertex, who took over the multi-platform project according to Martin – though there is no evidence to suggest this happened.

It was unknown at the time if the C64 version was completed, but the Spectrum and Amstrad versions were and received poor reviews. Dawn Hollywood (then Drake), worked on the ZX Spectrum version and unfortunately did not know anything about the C64 conversion.

Rumors were originally of Martin Calvert doing the graphics and his older brother Steve coding it.  Martin Calvert originally confirmed that the C64 version was nothing to do with him or his brother and that possibly it was actually outsourced to another individual.

There was once supplied what was believed to be a C64 screenshot, published in a Swedish magazine called Soft, which catered for both the Amiga and C64. There was no real Amstrad scene over there, and the Spectrum was virtually non-covered… so was this REALLY a c64 version?…. Well, no – it was the Spectrum version in the end!

Finally – a breakthrough in 2015, when Sean Townsend confirmed that he was the sole developer of Charlie Chaplin on the C64.  The graphic artist eventually would be confirmed as Martin Calvert, who eventually recalled the project after a final prod.  The game was designed by Gary Bolton.   Music was composed by Mark Cooksey in a bit of freelance work away from Elite.

The game was confirmed to be incomplete – but was functional as far as Chaplin being able to walk around scenes and interact with other characters.  The record and playback functionality however was extremely buggy and needed a lot more work to get going properly and to finish the project.

Progress halted when Sean was not being paid properly by Canvas, and so he left and moved to Barcrest.  No-one picked up the project afterwards, and Sean wasn’t sure why the game didn’t get finished off.  Maybe a C64 developer could not be found to tidy things up?

Sean confirmed that game was done from scratch and was not a port, utilizing the bitmap mode of the C64 and software sprites.   The loading however was very painful and ideally in hindsight for Sean, should have been done in a different way so it would work well on tape.

Sean kindly dug out all of his C64 and Atari disks, and did a long term loan to GTW64 to see if we could preserve anything of Charlie Chaplin between 2015 and 2016.  After a very long slog to get the Atari-format C64 source code preserved and sorting the C64 disks out – a fully executable version of the game was found and preserved.

Most of the game is actually there, and is believed to be about 80-90% complete overall.   There is heavy corruption in places with some of the animation frames not working (in particular the collapse of characters),  and the playback feature not fully functional or working correctly.  The playback of each 3 scenes in the cinema is missing cut scene text and doesn’t quite seem to work.  You can however play the game and see most of the scenes from the complete game.

The loading is terrible though as Sean suggests, and it is hard to see how the game would have worked well on tape.   In combination with the shallow idea for the game, no doubt this would have bombed too in the press like the other versions.   Sean did his best though given the circumstances and design that he was given to work with.

Mark Cooksey’s music has been integrated, though it seems not all of it.   There is a separate music demo which has a “Sad” tune not seemingly utilized.  Only the title tune has been added, and menu tunes present in the CPC version are missing.   There is also a distinct lack of SFX compared to the other versions, which suggests Sean may have gone with a “silent movie” approach, or they are yet to be discovered (maybe tucked away in Mark’s music files?)

We are very pleased to present though what remains of the conversion and solve a mystery that has been running for many years now.  It is a title that will intrigue, and finally we can see how the game was looking on the C64 – all thanks to Sean and his kind loan of his work disks!

Contributions: Martin Holland, Fabrizio Bartoloni, Martin Calvert, Martin Smith, Sean Townsend, Ross Sillifant, Jazzcat

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/charlie-chaplin/
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Cheeky Twins 3  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Prototype
Release Year: 1995
Publisher: Zeroline
Programmer: Jan Krolzig
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1995 Zeroline
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Jan Krolzig
Graphics: Jan Krolzig
Sound: Jan Krolzig

Ok, so i’m a little confused with our next title. Cheeky Twins 3 is of course the third game from a trilogy that never was. The game as you might expect should have a cute theme to it, with the previous two titles being a single screen platformer and a bomberman clone respectively.

However, this is a sideways scrolling shooter – which doesn’t seem to have much of a tie to the series apart from the title screen.

But it is a good sideways scrolling preview though – a promising one with some good visuals. There is one level in total, before it continuously scrolls forever.

So how does it relate to the other games? We’re not sure just yet, but hope that Jan Krolzig can tell us more. But also shed light about what happened to the game? Did real life commitments get in the way in the end?

Do you know any more about this game?


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/cheeky-twins-iii/
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Circus Fun  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Preview
Release Year: 1985
Developer: Alligata
Programmer: Stephen Kellett
Musician: Dave Weaver
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1985 Alligata
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Stephen Kellett
Graphics: Stephen Kellett
Sound: Dave Weaver

Alligata produced quite a few classic titles and shot certain developers like Tony Crowther to fame. Towards 1986, and sadly Alligata was to be no more, and so it was laid to rest. In 2005, James Grayson loaned GTW a batch of 40 disks which were Alligata master disks sold at a bootfair in Sheffield. On one of these disks was a bugged and early preview of a game called “Circus Fun!”, produced by Stephen Kellett who did other games for Alligata and later Players as far as we are aware.

After some rather nervy disk conversion from a dying disk, we managed to get all of the game ported across without fail and got the thing running.
It is a miracle that the demo disk has survived, and this could be the last remaining copy of the game. GTW has luckily salvaged and saved it for people to see.

What you’ll find is a very early, and sadly quite bugged clone of Bigtop Barney (Or Circus Charlie by Konami as its better known in the arcades…).

The game consists of controlling a clown on top of a lion who has to jump through hoops of fire. There are money bags, which you would think are collectable, but these actually kill you if you collide with them. It was hard to progress far into the game, mainly because of the poor collisions and the bugs. One fatal bug seems to be when you lose 2 lives, and the game gets stuck in a never-ending loop. Thanks to Jaymz Julian, we were surprised to find that the game is not just a one level preview, but there is infact much more here than meets the eye.

In total, there are 5 levels which match the arcade game Circus Charlie. Unfortunately, the game is so bugged that you will have to freeze at regular points like Jaymz did to actually reach the later parts. Thanks to Jaymz we can present screenshots of how the game looks at each level. Although we haven’t seen the later levels, from Jaymz account of the game, we can see that if the game was bug fixed, we’d have something rather nice here. We hope that in the future someone will be able to take a look at the game and fix it for people to enjoy.

Some story behind the game, Alligata commissioned Stephen to produce the game for them.  However, after pretty much completing the game – Alligata didn’t like what they saw and cancelled the release.  Stephen sadly never got paid (See full story in creator speaks).  Alligata shouldn’t have really kept hold of the game, but it is lucky they did!

So we learn of how the game came about, and us discovering it seems to have been a pure fluke really. A chance that Alligata kept all their disks. But it seems there could be a better version available, including even a music score. Steve has promised to check his disks, as he probably still has the sources.

Exciting news, and hopefully we are very close now to closing the case on this one!…

Contributions: James Grayson, Jazzcat, Jaymz Julian, Stephen Kellett

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/circus-fun/
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Citadel II  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Preview
Release Year: 1992
Programmer: Martin Piper
Musician: Alan Peters
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Citadel 2
1992 Martin Piper

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Martin Piper
Graphics: Martin Piper
Sound: Alan Peters

Citadel 2 is a rather old project that came to light during the making of "Berzerk Redux" recently, Martin Piper’s C64 conversion of the arcade game. When Martin needed some music to add to the game, he found a piece written by Alan Peters back in 1992 for the unfinished Citadel II. We approached Martin and asked if there was anything left of the project.

Martin spoke about the game and said about the music, "The music was originally composed by Alan (back in 1992) for a top down scrolling city type of game (a lot like Citadel ) we were working on, the working title was actually "Citadel II" *ahem*. So the music was composed to fit with the rushing around corridors with robots chasing you, so I thought it would fit this game too."

Martin looked through his work disks and found an early demo of Citadel II. Martin’s comment is "It is definitely a technical proof of concept demo and only contains placeholder graphics, sound and rough game play." It is definitely very similar to Citadel in style, with teleporters moving between sides/areas of a maze and door barriers (which can be shot to get through, closing shortly afterwards).

Overall this was a game being done mostly for fun it seems, with no commercial gain. But check out the preview for yourself and see what could have been. Very early, but very promising!

Another title salvaged and preserved – case closed!…

Contributions: Martin Piper, Ian Coog


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/citadel-2/
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City Invaders  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Preview
Release Year: 1993
Developer: CP Verlag
Programmer: Bastiaan Molsbeck
Musician: Peer
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1993 CP Verlag
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Bastiaan Molsbeck
Graphics: Bastiaan Molsbeck
Sound: Peer

I like City Invaders – it is a neat sort of Pooyan clone with a cool main character who pops their head in and out of building windows trying to stop the city invaders.

There isn’t too much to the preview just yet, but its a good indication of a fun little budget title that was due for release by CP Verlag.

So what happened to the title? CP Verlag were still going strong at the time, so we believe that it was real life commitments that got in the way or a platform upgrade.

Do you know any more about this game?


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/city-invaders/
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Cola Quest  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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199? Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Paralyze
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

Cola Quest is a promising and early icon-driven graphic adventure, which seems to have been in development sometime during the 90’s, but didn’t get too far.

The preview that we have here just seems to have a single screen with limited interaction, but gives a good indication of the icon set and how it would have worked.

It was looking good overall, and so we begin the search to find out what happened to the game and if it ever got much further than this. Was it ever intended for a software company of the time?

Watch this space


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/cola-quest/
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Collapsar  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Preview
Release Year: 1987
Developer: Quantum Logic
Programmer: Neil Raine, Neil Kendall
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1987 Quantum Logic
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Neil Raine, Neil Kendall
Graphics: Neil Raine, David Livesey
Sound: Unknown

Collapsar was a cheeky little game which passed a certain resembalance to a classic Braybrook title.

Not quite as polished as the original Uridium classic, it was the fact that it was a clone that scared potentual publishers off the title.

Created by the people behind "Lunar Jailbreak", which controversially got released on the Commodore Format powerpack.

The game was pitched to companies, such as Codemasters who all were scared off by its resembalance. Due to the non-interest, the programmers didn’t fix the bugs which existed in the game, and it got shelved.

Recently Neil Kendall got onto the C64 scene, and started to convert his old disks, and explained the real story of Lunar Jailbreak, and also promised more unreleased titles, including this one.

And that is it… this is the final version of a long lost title which was too similiar to Uridium. Worth a blast though.

Nice clone, but its downfall… Case closed…

Contributions: Neil Kendall

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Neil Kendall speaks about work on Collapsar...

"Collapsar was never released because of its similarity to a certain Braybrook classic.

We could not get any company interested so we gave up on the game and that is why it still 
has several bugs in it - we didn't see the point in fixing them so we went onto other projects 
(Super Stuntman and Lethal).

Indeed Richard & David Darling of Codemasters Software said "Due to various technical and copyright reasons we feel unable to accept Collapsar at this time".

The game had been totally lost until an old disk turned up in a friends attic that contained Collapsar 
among other files. I had problems trying to read the disk with Star Commander due to its Warp25 format so MayhemUK kindly re-froze the files for me into a format that could be read.

iAN CooG/HF then kindly un-froze the game and cleaned up the files before passing them onto Richard Bayliss of TND to be released."

Neil Kendall. 

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/collapsar/
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Colony  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A year passed since the death of the commercial UK C64 scene, and Commodore Zone and Commodore Scene had taken over where C-Format and C-Force had once stood. Games were few and far between, but for those reading, each new release was as exciting as a Gold Medal game reviewed by Zzap. The C64 scene needed games!

Colony was announced in 1995/1996 to the delight of many readers of both magazines. It wasn’t until the preview was unveilled on the covermount of Commodore Zone, when the true realisation of the game was found.

Colony is what can only be described as a cross between Phil Nicolson’s Deadline and Defender. Featuring little men which you have to protect and save for your Colony (Hence the name).

Although not a wholy original concept, Colony incorporated some amazing techniques which had only really been seen in the likes of Mayhem, with its impressive colour mixing and fast parallax scrolling.

The original preview went down well, but suffered from critism for being too hard. No problem, some constructive critism for Jon. However, after numerous tweaks and a bit more work, Jon decided to call it time on the project. Possibly for a realisation that the game could take time, and not reap much back. It was slowly being realised at the time that a realistic good profit could not be made anymore with new C64 software. EBES had already been there and failed for instance.

After struggling to get the game complete – Jon decided to hand the project over. Colony was handed to Oxidy/Ambush designs back in 1997. However, it was reported that Jon had lost some of the source code and they needed them all to finish the game. It seems they never got all of it…  

In recent times, Jon himself has shed some very detailed light upon the subject of his unfinished masterpiece, which he critisizes quite heavily. He details about the various new C64 techniques which would have blown any gamer away as much as Mayhem did on its release. But as John says, "All ‘if’s and but’s". .. Even Russ Michaels of EBES and Jon Wells were said to try to help the game’s progress out in various ways.

Still, Jon manages to paint a picture of a game which can stir the imagination and excitement of any C64 game enthusiast. Read more about the game in Johns own words on the Creator Speaks page.

To almost conclude, the game only made it to the stage of a few extra tweaks and a few completed levels. But not much but the previews which you can download from here.

Recently Jason Mackenzie was instrumental in uncovering further parts of the remains of the game, and as well as the original preview, there has now been uncovered a full-hires colour picture and a superb sprite test demo to now seemingly complete this entry….

well, not quite….

Allan Bairstow was another person to have a load of Jon’s disks, and sure enough GTW were loaned the disks. Upon examing the contents, we were not disapointed!

We found another rare preview of the game… a earlier preview than the rest, with the ship movement in place (rather unsmoothly) and no enemies over a different colour landscape. This file is separate from the D64 in the zip… you may need CCSC64 to run it… as it needs compressing we think to work in Vice (or at least an AR cart plugged in).

But also a fair bit of Source Code was discovered. We asked Jon about putting the source out, and he has given us the thumbs up. You can now download 3 disks worth of source code, bits and pieces.. sfx, graphics and other bits we don’t know much about. These need looking at carefully, as there could be unknown bits on there…. we hope to go into more detail to what they are very soon…. there could be a lot of unused material there… but have a look for yourself!… and help us if you figure it all out!  

Finally, in 2009… Vinny Mainolfi helped in uncovering yet more remains when he backed up an old Commodore Cracker fanzine disk. On here was a special preview with a different title screen and a slightly different preview with no sound and different panels. So yet more to check out!. We learn from this that actually Parallel Logic were originally going to be releasing the game!… this must have fell through when PL left the C64. Jazzcat has kindly taken the relevant files and also some clean note files and previews uncracked and given us an extra D64 to add to the download archive.

Another exciting production, unfortunatly scrapped… case almost closed…..

Contributions: Jon Woods, Jason Mackenzie, Allan Bairstow, Vinny Mainolfi, Jazzcat

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Jon Woods speaks to GTW about work on Colony...

"You only gave me 8/10 (referring to the old score system GTW once had), which is about right considering how I never polished up the gameplay - I was always more concerned with producing stunning visuals at first, planning to sort the gameplay out later. Although I abandoned the project many moons ago, I still think about what could have been. I planned a desertscape (like in the Westerns), a waterscape (with shimmering parallaxed effects), a nightscape (with parallaxing forests), a cityscape (with burning buildings, etc.), and, best of all, a winterscape.

The winterscape was to have had the c64's first ever parallaxing snowfields, and this was to have been attempted by a special technique for toggling between two charsets and two screen pointers, so that there would have been two screens updated at once, but only one visible at a time, if you follow - whether this would have worked or not, I'll probably never know. I also thought of renaming the game "Warchild", of increasing the on-the-ground action, and expanding the dogfighting sequences which begin in the demo once you've slain most of the helicopters. Oh, I also reckon many more layers of very convincing parallax could have been added, but alas, the world is full of "could-haves" and "if onlys", so there's no point whingeing.

There was a version that used the 2MHz speed of the C128 to speed up some of the processes, and it worked only on a c128 in c64 mode. When the raster was updating the upper and lower border of the screen, the 2MHz mode was activated, and then switched back to 1MHz for the main screen. A pointless exercise really, it was done just to prove that it worked, though it did tempt me to consider a c128 only version of the game. The parallaxing code was based on a system developed by Phil Nicholson (I think that's his name) who wrote Deadline. The graphics also featured a strange combination of chroma-noise colour mixing, as perfected in Mayhem, and colour-dithering, which I think worked really well, although I've never seen an emulator that could mix the colours properly.

I also had plans to sharpen up the graphics so that they lost any semblance of blockiness - this would have been possible by using hires rather than multicolour mode in certain places, along with a technique which has enormous potential, but which probably every coder since the early days has ignored - ECM (Extended Colour Mode). I piloted a technique using this in-built c64 feature in a strange demo I coded in an awful hurry for Kenz - it was called Project Red Moon, and ECM is used, in a very limited way, for colour blending the skyline in one of the sequences of that lame-ish rip-off of the impressiveTerminus demo. (ps - Red Moon tested various new techniques).

Anyway, back to Colony - Russ Michaels of EBES saw it and requested that I rename it Defensive, in honour of the aborted project of the same name. At that stage I had already decided to quit work on it, and anyway, I was not enamoured by Russ's attitude to things. Round about that time, Jon Wells sent me demos of his music, with a view to composing a piece for Colony.

From a coding purist's viewpoint, Colony was no masterpiece. The scrollers were very inefficient, and I made the mistake of not updating all sprite attributes from the IRSTs (raster interrupts), although the final game would have had these issues resolved. Graphics wise, my aim was to produce something that looked too good to be a c64 game - I love nice scenery, and I was determined to have a beautiful, parallaxed scene in each level. However, where interrupts are used for gfx, speed, rather than compact code, is of the essence - for the same reason, it would be advisable to try to produce games on smaller areas of the screen, through this has been rarely done. 


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/colony/
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Crimson Twilight  (Preview)
Original title: Crimson Twilight - Forgotten Chamber Of The Seers
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Coming soon..
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Crystal Chamber  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Another previously unknown game which was to be released on the short-lived RetroSoft label back in 2005.

This was a sort of Bejeweled clone on the C64, written by Jason Kelk – and was shaping up very nicely before it’s cancellation.

Overall the game was nearing completion and just needed some basic tidy ups.  Graphically the game is heavily inspired by Reaxion, with similar patterns in the background and using the main sprite temporarily.  The game was fully playable and just required a bit of extra polish really and the implementation of a working score panel.

Unfortunately when things fell through with RetroSoft, so did the game too – and it has remained dormant ever since.   The game thankfully has now been fully recovered and patched up for GTW64 to release into its archives – with no plans to ever finish the game.

It’s certainly fun to play, but the lack of polish shows in places – but it is certainly worth checking out to see what might of been.

Enjoy!

Contributions: Jason Kelk

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Jason Speaks about work on Crystal Chamber:

“Crystal Chamber was started for Retro-soft after their head man (whose name completely escapes me) got in touch asking for something on the C64 to release. It was based loosely on games like  Protovision’s freebie Cascade but with an infinite supply of crystals being dropped into the play area to keep things moving. Selecting a group of coloured gems makes them disappear and, had I got around to it, that would’ve filled the “mass” meter – if it wasn’t full before the timer (which I forgot to add to the status bar so it would’ve needed a redesign) ran out the game would be over, otherwise the next level would start with the gameplay tweaked a little.

It slowly ground to a halt because Retro-soft sort of drifted off and, since I’ve got the attention span of a knat on good days, I’m liable to forget things unless there is at least the occasional nag.

And to be honest I’d become quite worried about how Retro-soft were doing business, they were upsetting people in the Spectrum community in various ways and I wasn’t particularly keen on being associated with them.

Looking at the code now, it would need work (and probably a major rewrite since I’m fairly sure the “find match” code is bugged and the status bar is missing an important element) but who knows… maybe I’ll go back to it at some point.”

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/crystal-chamber/
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CTBeta07_ArkanixLabs (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Cydonia  (Preview V2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Demo
Release Year: 1992
Programmer: Bernhard Burgstaller
Musician: Bernhard Burgstaller, Matt Grey, Chris Huelsbeck
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Cydonia
1992 Bernhard Burgstaller

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Bernhard Burgstaller
Graphics: Robert Strunk
Sound: Bernhard Burgstaller, Matt Grey, Chris Huelsbeck

Another great finding, and this time a rather nice (if slightly buggy) Giana clone of sorts called Cydonia by Bernhard Burgstaller.

We say buggy, as this game is in its very early stages in various shapes and forms, but you can see the potential in the game from its previews that you can check out. The previews from Bernhard’s website have been tidyied up for GTW thanks to Skeletor and are now available to download along with the original sources and files from Bernhard’s website.

The earliest versions of the game almost exactly imitate Giana Sisters, but its later versions where things become more advanced and adventerous. Sadly the later levels are not too playable, but you should be able to navigate around and get a rough feel for how things could have shaped up.

We are not too sure of the background with the game just yet… The development occured for around 3 years from 1989 to 1992 on and off. It seems that potentially one of the publishers could have been Rainbow Arts, as the copyright is mentioned in the title screen of the last preview. Was it touted to them?

Imaging this game completed – try to picture something along the lines of Fred’s Back 3, and that I guess is what Cydonia is trying to achieve.

While we hope to find out much more about this game, check out the previews and sources and see what you think and imagine what could have been. Don’t expect a full playable game, as you won’t get this. It’s however a nice tech demo to display some great ideas.

Bernhard recently got in touch with GTW and informed us about some additional demos which were more advanced that he dug out, these can now be found within the download link above. There are a lot of previews to check out! Enjoy!

A nice early phase preview which is worth checking out…

Contributions: Skeletor, Bernhard Burgstaller

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"Cydonia is a unfinished game by me for the C64 written in 1989-1992. Cydonia is a jump and run game and is inspired by Great Giana Sisters for C64 (which in fact imitates Super Mario Bros). The game was significantly technically modified several times. You can download different versions of the game divided into three categories corresponding to different stages of development of Cydonia.

In the game buy the cyan "S" (Speed) in the department store; otherwise you walk very slowly. The green balls in the store are shots.

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/cydonia/
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Deadlock  (Preview V2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Undefined
Release Year: 1993
Developer: System 3
Programmer: Dan Phillips
Musician: Reyn Ouwehand, Martin Walker
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Deadlock
1990 System 3

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Dan Phillips
Graphics: Robin Levy
Sound: Reyn Ouwehand, Martin Walker

Now this is a GTW that has gone down in history as one of the most eagerly wanted games to appear on the C64 in some form. For many years we have been taunted with the fantastic screenshots from Zzap 64 and the infamous Cyberdyne Interviews.

Deadlock was worked on for a number of months over the space of approximately 2 years and promised very much in the way of an Impossible Mission type game crossed with the likes of Trantor and Armalyte (With insights into the game from Zzap 64.).

It’s team was infact Cyberdyne Systems, the very people who did Armalyte. It looked and promised to be a ground breaking game, with stunning visuals from Robin Levy, code from Dan Phillips and music by Reyn Ouwehand. Even there was some sound effects by Martin Walker to add to Reyn’s music.

To say that the game was groundbreaking was an understatement. Deadlock was far ahead of its time and featured some of the most authentic and ambitious graphics and animational detail to feature in a C64 game. We are talking major detail in a game from 1989/1990, from its realistic walking and jumping to its realistic gun recoil and reload animations. It was essentially very much like a 8-bit version of Super Metroid! (Quite scarily actually!) Sadly it was to be the graphics which killed the game stone dead.

Ultimately it all boiled down to the fact that the game had been wrapped up so much in its awesome visuals directed by Robin, that playability was terminal. This was the opinion of Cyberdyne, and they even admit that compared to Armalyte, this game was not fun to work on. Fun was a crucial element in Cyberdyne’s production phases. System 3 at the time were still confident to see this stunning blaster make a release, and even got Reyn to compose a set of tunes which were to be never used (Apart from one being cheekily used in their cartridge version of Myth).

What also didn’t help was the fact that both Dan and Robin were dragged away to work on Last Ninja 3 (Dan on the Intro) and so the whole project was shelved for the time being and overall for the rest of its days. It was mentioned in an interview that the game would likely be resurrected after Last Ninja 3 and turned into a more Shinobi styled game. It never happened…

And so Deadlock, after several dozen previews and incarnations, suffered an unfortunate death and was sentanced to life on its development disks. That is until GTW became live, and Dan Phillips got in contact.

Out of the blue one day back in around 2000, GTW recieved an email from Dan, giving tons of information on his titles and also the last reminants of Armalyte 2. Deadlock was also promised, after permission was gained from System 3. After attempts to gain contact with System 3, no reply was ever heard, and a relaunch later in 2003, Christmas 2003 saw a GTW update which Dan gave permission to GTW to finally distribute the remains of what is a fantastic work of art.

Dan kindly supplied GTW with 4 very different previews of Deadlock (As different as possible) to give you the best possible view of how the game was. Finally you can throw those old screenshots away and check out a slice of Cyberdyne history for yourself, and you may just get a shock at how good those amazing stills move!

In December 2010, GTW preserved some disks from John Kemp and Robin Levy, and found a large number more of early previews and variations. We have added all of these to the download, and the very early previews are quite different!

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Dan Phillips and Robin Levy speak about work on Deadlock...

<Extracted from readme with download>

"Deadlock was written over the course of at least a year going through several iterations until it was finally abandoned.

Started in 1989 it died sometime in 1990 RIP.

Rob- "put out of our misery more like" =)

Please be aware that this is not a "fun" "game". At the time we thought we could take just about any genre and improve upon the leading example. We made several mistakes compared to Armalyte. Firstly there weren't a lot of good platform based puzzle and shoot'em up games around that we could draw inspiration from, or there were none that we had played for countless hours and could complete on a single 10p (thank you Salamander). The basic essence or mechanic of a good game was lacking, instead we had something that looked very cool. It didn't have the fine control and maneuverability to make the platform element good, plus it didn't have the immediate appeal of having lots of moving things on screen that you could wipe out or scrape past at a pinch.

2020 hindsight is a marvelous tool.

We should have stuck to writing Armalyte 2, it would have been so very much more fun to work on.

Rob- "It would have been so very much more fun to work on."... Is probably the most fundamental point anyone could possibly make... if you aren’t having fun working on the game, how do you expect anyone to have fun playing it? Honestly, thinking back it's almost as if we were working on this abomination for the sake of working. =(

v0.04 Music taken from Driller (AFAIR) shown to System 3 ?

Colour splits
Sloooow walking only, no keys or security passes
No background animation
Enemies you can shoot

Rob - awful animation--- SPACEBAR=enter doorway

v0.07

Running + sfx (supplied by Martin Walker)
Automatic running up stairs
Shooting slows you down
Security passes
Background animation for doors opening

Rob - Getting there but still quite sucky

v0.08

Supposed to be parallax scrolling (never did get round to putting that in :))

Rob - This is when we started to worry that things were terminally wrong. Notice the way that bad guys that drop pickups only regenerate after you've collected the pickup? This is all down to the ridiculous way I insisted that the main character should be built.

v0.09

Most complete and nearly a whole level
Last demo
Complete graphical re-design

Keys + tips for the final demo (some of these work on earlier versions)

F1-F2 swap weapon (if you run out of ammo the chain fist is your friend)

F3-F4 grenade mode (bounces until you let go of fire then explodes)

Alt-Gr alter the grenade trajectory (CCS64)

F5 swap between Snap/Auto/Burst depending on weapon selected

F7 reload

Crouch picks up the object your standing over

To use the lift face out of the screen (hold fire to call)

To go though doors face out of the screen and press up

Some doors require security passes/keys (They’ll get used automatically if you have them and they match the required pass when you try and enter them, face out of the screen and press up)

There are switches to open barriers and some force walls that need to be disabled to complete the demo...or you can use the room teleporting below.

"+" and "-" cycle through which room to start in and "p" makes you go to that room (the spaceship/jet fighter launch bay and munitions bay are particularly worth having a gander at, but they are to your right off screen when you get to those rooms so you have to run a bit to see them).

Rob- The Planet surface and the subterranean silo bit were going to be in the next load.

There was one more version of this level after this one which would have been quite promising- the locations tied together more logically, it had some working puzzles and the bad guys were placed better thing is, we were all very skint at this stage so I ended up "deserting" the rest of Cyberdyne to go do LN3 in London and Dan and John got the offer of Armalyte 2, so that was that.

One thing that I can't help thinking now is how much of a better conceived game Turrican was, I didn't like it too much at the time but Rainbow Arts made an arcade shooter that worked and was playable. Just goes to show, we (I) knew sod all about good, fun platform games at the time.

Another thing is that we were "inspired" by one good game (impossible mission) and 3 atmospheric but really quite dull games on the Amiga; Obliterator, Baal and Stryx, which seems odd because I remember us enjoying Rick Dangerous and Switchblade far more than the three Psygnosis games.

A few years later, after playing with the SNES and Megadrive I designed the levels for “Ruff n Tumble” on the Amiga, a platformer that I was quite pleased with, small consolation though for the sheer hell of fudging the core design on Deadlock- which honestly should have gone back to the drawing board a month after we started.

Ultimately it was my fault. Most of my design effort was placed on the story not the game play (BIG mistake) and all it would have taken was for me to go away and redo the character in 2 or even 1 sprites for the game to have taken a completely different turn... probably.

Sorry folks. =/

I think Rob is being a bit harsh on himself :).

So there you have it, I hope you can find something in the demos that is at least mildly interesting.
 We eventually got over the mistake and went on to work on many other titles, but even now still remember what was known as “Deadloss”.

Dan Phillips and Robin Levy.

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/deadlock/
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Death or Glory  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Undefined
Release Year: 2005
Programmer: Richard Bayliss
Musician: Richard Bayliss
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2005 Richard Bayliss
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Richard Bayliss
Graphics: Johan Janssen
Sound: Richard Bayliss

Here we have another Richard Bayliss GTW, this time a two player game called Death or Glory. It was abandoned due to bitmap difficulties, and what remains is a briefly playable combat game where the players control a ‘ghost ship’ over a background of half a dozen islands in an ocean. The players control the ships and fire at each other, basically until the opponent ‘dies’. Sadly when this happens the game crashes, as nothing further was done.

The game has good potential as a fun, multiplayer battle game.

Setting it in an ocean gives the potential to add sea monsters or other variables, and the format is perfect for allowing up to four players, using the four player adapter that can be bought on Protovision’s website. The game is familiar enough to be instantly accessible while having enough originality to draw the veteran gamer in, and multiplayer can be fun no matter how stereotypical the game is.

Richard had the following to say about the game…

"This was originally a little demo part, which JSL/Covenant and I were working on. This was basically a 2-player game, where you had to move your ghost ship around the sea and shoot each other.

This game preview never became a game itself, as I had got into difficulties regarding bitmap background to sprite collision. So as you will see, the game has been unfinished for a very long time. Johan did all the graphics work, except for the char set, which I used from one of my games. Will the game ever get finished you will have to wait and see. I don’t know if it will, for certain."

The good thing about modern GTWs is there is always a chance the game will one day be finished, in the mean time we can enjoy what there is (particularly the music) and hope Richard finds time to sort out the difficulties and release the game to the public.

Contributions: Richard Bayliss

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/death-or-glory/
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Decent Strip Poker  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Undefined
Release Year: 1995
Programmer: Michal Bacik
Musician: Blues Muz'
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Deluxe Strip Poker
1995 New Entry

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Michal Bacik
Graphics: Vladimir Kalny, Michal Bacik
Sound: Blues Muz'

A graphically impressive strip poker game, with some artwork which puts Cover Girl and Sam Fox Strip Poker right into the shade.

Very proffesionally created, this game was meant for release by mail order.

Featuring a impressive set of developers working on the game, the game had everything it could wish for.

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/deluxe-strip-poker/

For unknown reasons, this was not enough and the game never got any further to a completed stage for release.

Contacting the people to the left will establish exactly what happened.

Get a good gawk at those nawks!…
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Defensive  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A quite impressive game which readers of Commodore Format will remember only too well. The C64 was dying, the games were drying up. EBES were one of those unfortunate companies who put much into the UK games scene, but never really got anything back.

A big spread was put in a late issue of Commodore Format, dedicated to the launch of EBES, where the big exciting release promised was this little game right here.

Defensive is pretty much a clone of Defender with knobs on. That is, some impressive parallax scrolling (Similar to Sanxion in some respects), a neat ship and cool end guardians. The preview consists of 3 levels, with no attackwaves, just a few crafts and end baddies. There is also no sound present.

This preview is actually quite old from the late 80′s, and Russ Michaels planned to enhance the game with his team of programmers. Ian and Martin (Known more as ‘God and Hake’) were good friends of Russ, and ditched the game before they moved onto fully fledged commercial projects such as ‘Galdregons Domain’ and ‘Volfield’. When EBES became a company back in 1994, Russ dug the game out which was pretty much there in terms of a game and decided to finish it as a first big release for EBES.

Those with RAMLINK’s would have been able to experience instant gaming, with added video cutscenes and sequences. The graphics were to be more colourful and defined, more going on in the animation department and ultra smooth scrolling. And don’t forget some awesome music! These were the features mentioned in Commodore Format. Of course, people without a Ramlink would probably have had to put up with a cut down version.

Russ took the game, messed around and got it to a playable demo state. All that was needed was a series of graphics and tweaks, plus some added gameplay and attack waves. A job which was quite achievable.

However, things became slightly difficult at EBES headquarters, with most of the development team leaving Russ by himself to man the whole ship. One can only assume that this caused delays to development on Defensive and led to its second death.

As Commodore World was being in the UK by EBES as part of its many ventures (This to save the magazine readership in the uk), Russ asked readers to let him know if they wanted to support Defensive. No response was made for the game, and so it was axed.

Just how impressive this game would have been is now a mystery which we will never know. Certainly from what remains, there is a lot of promise and hope for what could have been a game that gave C64 supporters a last gasp of software in its dying commercial days. Quite simply people moved on, C-Format’s readership dwindled and the people left would have had to all supported Russ for EBES to have been a success as it should have been for all its efforts.

Certainly something which may interest is the fact that Russ actually approached Jon Woods, creator of Colony, in the view of changing the name of Colony to ‘Defensive’ and selling it through EBES. However, this never really materialised and didn’t get released either. However, it’s rumoured that some transformation was made by Jon Woods, which is currently being examined.

Coming soon I hope will be an insight into the game from its first incarnation from God and Hake themselves. There has been a brief appearance from Martin Godbeer on PPOT’s site, so soon we hope to bring you information about plans in its first life.  But it seems the plan was to push this commercially, maybe through Players budget label via their Digital Light and Magic developer label.   From some notes from Charles Deenan, it came to light that Defensive was to have music done by Jeroen Tel.  It seems that Jeroen may not have started the music, although there is still yet to be more tunes uncovered from Jeroen’s collection which have not yet been released.

Possibly a very big loss for the C64, but was never mean’t to be…

Contributions: Russ Michaels, Jason Kelk

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Russ Michaels speak about work on Defensive...

"As merman said, this was a game originally designed by a friend of mine Martin Godbeer, from the old Compunet team God+Hake, they started a company called Digital Light and Magic and this was one of the unfinished games.

I basically took what they had done, tarted about with it, got it working and put a playable demo together. It didn't have a huge amount of workleft to be done.

The alien attack patterns and sprites, plus some general lextra evel design and playability was all that was needed.

I can't remember what else there was?."

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/defensive/
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Devious Designs  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Undefined
Release Year: 1991
Programmer: Peter Baron
Musician: Martin Walker and Pete Baron
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1991 Imageworks

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Peter Baron
Graphics: Bob Stevenson
Sound: Martin Walker and Pete Baron (Test SFX)

A curious little puzzler which involves unscrambling various famous structures of world famous works of art created by Dr Devious by controlling JJ (JoJo) Maverick, the hero of the game. 

The game featured some smart GFX. Vivid Image’s graphic man Bob Stevenson had put a lot of effort into the graphics, which sadly was to event to nothing. Commodore Format stated also that Martin Walker was playing a part in this game too, handling all the various audio twinkles. This was later to be confirmed also for the C64 version.

Originally it was rumoured that John Twiddy or Doug Hare were behind the game, but both have been crossed off the list. Doug Hare confirmed to GTW that it was none other than Myth/Salamander creator Peter Baron who was the coder of both the C64 and Amiga versions.

Peter started out on the C64 version, mainly because he had not quite picked up the Amiga/ST code at that point. When Peter finally did pick up the code, he did a source conversion in a day and had the game playable on the Amiga/ST, even having Bob’s graphics ported from the C64!

The game made it out fully onto the Amiga/ST, but unfortunately the C64 version didn’t. The Amiga version then suddenly took priority during the C64′s development, and this was completed. By this time, the C64 version was 2 months behind schedule. Imageworks spoke to Peter and Bob, and told them to drop the C64 conversion as the C64 was dying out. And sadly it was shelved. It was nothing to do with Imageworks going under as first thought!

Peter was tracked down in 2005, and very kindly has given a detailed account of the game (even though he is a very busy man) and you can read in full detail in Creator Speaks.

Peter tells us that the game was born in a pub while drinking with Bob Stevenson, where they came up with the main character who had mystical powers, and could walk up walls and on the ceiling.

Although the game was produced very fast and at a good flow, the game was way too complex to play because of its cramming of many controllable features into a joystick with one button. 

Levels had to be dumbed down to add a good learning curve, but it was proving difficult. Most of the complex ideas were reluctantly dropped to try and save the C64 version slightly. Even the easy levels were not quite so easy! One of the test levels (Which featured the Big Apple) was later moved to an Advanced level as it was so hard!

The game production lasted about 9 months in total on the C64. 

Sonically, Martin Walker was to do dynamic music that reacted to the game and the player’s actions. 
This was a very complicated idea which apparently caused Martin various problems (On the Amiga/ST versions). GTW spoke with Martin Walker and confirmed he would have been doing the C64 music had the game been completed, though because he did music at the last minute for games, nothing for the C64 version was sadly ever started.

BUT… Now for the news you have been waiting for….

At long last, GTW is proud to present the first ever release of the C64 conversion of Devious Designs. Approximately 80% complete, and very playable indeed.

Pete tracked down his disks and passed on the remaining code to GTW. There were around 14 playable levels as far as we could see and 3 bonus levels to play, complete with SFX (but no music sadly). There were many bugs and the game was not as complete as some Source code from PC which Pete later passed on.

Thanks to Glenn Rune Gallefoss and Pete Baron, the game has been carefully pieced together from its sources to get the Bonus levels working which were corrupted in the original executable we were given. It’s Glenn and Pete therefore who have made it possible to see Devious in its most finished possible state.

The guys originally found a manner of other goodies hidden away in the sources, including a hidden 4 player mode (Not at the same time), and some other various bits and pieces. Not all the pieces could however be put into the game. Eventually it was decided by Pete to go with the original controls in the new source code, before Mirrorsoft changed everything. This is therefore most complete version of Devious in accordance Pete’s guidance during the compiling of a final version. The sources could well be added to the site at a later date, pending if Pete gives permission for this as an additional interest point.

This is a great puzzler which has some really nice artwork by Bob. The extra bonus is that Pete has supplied 6 previews of the game in various early stages as part of the launch of the game at last. You can find these in the original ported disk images also in the download.

We now await comment from Bob on his side of the work, but download the game and enjoy a piece of C64 history which has been saved from obscurity. Don’t forget to leave your comments and feedback on the game in the forums. Pete will hopefully answer any questions when he has some free time.

The biggest finding since Solar Jetman. Check it out…

Contributions: Doug Hare, Bob Stevenson, Peter Baron, Andrew Tuson, Glenn Rune Gallefoss, Jan Schulze

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Peter Baron and Bob Stevenson (Creators of Myth) speak about work on Devious Designs...

"Here's a brief story of what happened before we started making the game...Pete and I locked ourselves in a nice hotel for 3 days and just focused solidly on the design. It was a good idea because I had a nasty habit of dragging him away from work and getting drunk for the whole day, such was my tremendous work ethic in those days :)

The first pitch to a publisher that we gave was probably the worst I've ever been part of. But of course, is very funny looking back on it now. We went to pitch the game to a friend (Phil Harrison, who incidentally is now the head of SONY Worldwide Studios)of ours boss. This 6ft 6'' scary looking rich American businessman walked in the room shook my hand and almost cracked every bone. We had some rough ideas but they weren't fully formed and we had never really pitched an idea. I think I might have nervously acted out some of the characters movement. The guy just looked at us as if we were a couple of madmen that had just escaped from the asylum... Anyway...

We came up with a bunch of interesting ideas and we drew the game design by hand and painted the front cover (a square earth) CRAZY but it actually looked good and we were both very proud of it...

Pete, I can't remember if we did that design doc before or after that pitch...

Anyway, the second pitch to a different publisher went great they loved the idea and after a month of contract negotiations, we had a deal...

It was really a fun time, we made some really good games. Myth, Salamander and Devious Designs... I was in a meeting recently and this guy said out of the blue "How did you do the flames in Salamander?"... "

Bob Stevenson.

"Devious Designs was a game concept that Bob and I came up with in the pub just after we finished Myth. We were really into the idea of putting mystical mind powers into a game and the whole running up walls bit was mainly the result of a pint too many (as if there is such a thing!).

To be honest we designed a game that was too complex - the character (J.J.Maverick) had a huge range of moves - picking up, pushing, pulling, throwing blocks... also the ability to mentally 'merge' with blocks then control them like missiles... plus the whole 'down is the direction your feet are facing' thing which allowed him to walk up walls and upside down. Although I'd previously managed to cram a Lot of different moves onto the old C64 one button joystick for Myth, the controls for DD became far too unwieldy and the learning curve was too steep. We got the 'first playable' together in record time (I think it was about a month and a half) and then spent the next 3 months trying to make the game work the way we'd envisioned it. In the end and very reluctantly, we started to remove special moves.

We ended up leaving the core set of block moving functions, and the gravity distortion (because everyone thought that was a highly distinctive feature) but stripping virtually everything else. The C64 version was the lead product, mainly because I'd never written anything on an Amiga or Atari at that time and I needed some lead-time to read the manuals and learn 68K assembler language. However even after stripping down the move list the game still felt somewhat awkward to play - we were having trouble designing the 'easy' levels that would introduce the player to the moves in a logical and progressive manner and our 'test' level was what became the Big Apple for New York advanced level (this was one of the harder puzzles in the game) so we had a lot of complaints from Mirrorsoft about the learning curve and general difficulty level.

Nine months in we felt that we'd done about all we could do to fix these problems and we were both dieing to get started on the Amiga version. I did a straight line-for-line code conversion from the 6502 assembly language to 68K and rewrote the I/O libraries to work on the Amiga, and surprised Bob by converting all his C64 graphics too... we had the first Amiga playable ready one day after we started on it, which went a long way to restoring Mirrorsoft's faith in the project :)

That's pretty much where the C64 version stopped. Development went ahead on the Amiga as lead machine from that point on, and more moves were sacrificed in favour of the new gun and floating elementals (a feature we were not at all keen on). We sat down for a week with grid paper and designed many of the puzzles, including the Igloo which was finally simple enough to prove to the managers that the game could be made playable. By the time the Amiga and ST versions were nearly done, we were over the original deadline by two months and rapidly running out of money, we discussed the situation with Mirrorsoft and (rather surprisingly) they said that the C64 market was no longer large enough to be worth supporting so we should finish up the 16 bit versions and push them out for release.

The music was done by another contracter - I don't think it was Martin Walker this time though I can't be sure - there should be a credit in the Amiga/ST versions as they were all done by the same guy (Frank - "Amiga credits show that Martin did do the music, so this is now confirmed."). We had decided to attempt to use dynamic music that reacted to the game and the player's actions, so we requested a huge selection of audio loops that could fit together in a large number of ways - the idea was to 'build' the tune by choosing the appropriate loop that fitted onto what had gone before. Unfortunately the musician had a lot of trouble putting this idea into practice - the loops were too short and it was very hard for him to hear what it would sound like in each permutation. If I'd had a bit more time I would have put together a play-back tool for him, but in the end I think we settled for a regular tune.

I still have a box of 5.25" floppy disks from years ago, so it's possible that some of the source and maybe even a playable version are still available on one of them - I'll dig through next time I'm up in the attic and send you anything useable that I come across.

Later talking about how to play the game, and the game's excellent moves...

"JJ has 'personal gravity' so whichever way his feet are facing, that's 'down'

(directions in 'quotes' are relative to JJ's feet)

(*) He will always fall 'down'
(*) Jump is 'up' on the joystick (away from 'personal down')
(*) Forwards and turn around are as you'd expect
(*) Jumps can be directed by diagonals

(*) You can grab a wall which is in front of you while jumping by pressing towards it, you will then stand on it

(*) Walk around inside corners by pressing towards the wall until you climb onto it

(*) Walk around outside corners by just walking forwards over the edges - you won't fall
 (I think there was a way to *make* him fall rather than walk around, but I can't find this move now)

(*) Grab a block in front by fire
(*) Release a grabbed block by fire again
(*) Lift a grabbed block by 'up'
(*) Drag a grabbed block by 'backwards' (love this animation!)
(*) Throw a lifted block by 'fire+direction'
(*) Drop a lifted block by 'down'

(*) If lifting a tall block from a position higher than it's lowest point, 'up' repeatedly will slide it up

(*) If dropping a long block then 'down' repeatedly will slide it forwards until you can drop it

(*) You can drag 'L' or '+' shaped blocks by grabbing from inside the corner and pulling

(*) Mind-meld into a block using 'down' while standing on it
(*) Mind-meld through blocks using direction while mind-melded inside them
(*) Mind-project a block (carrying you with it) by pressing fire while mind-melded in it
(*) Exit a mind-melded block by using 'up' until you're outside it

(*) mind-glue a grabbed block by 'down', this will produce a glue-cursor that can be moved

(*) Stop mind-glue mode by pressing fire

(*) glued blocks cannot be separated (I'm pretty sure there was a "fragment" mode too, but I can't find it anymore)

(*) Each block has 'personal gravity'... they change colour to let you know which way that is

-blue = down-screen
-green = right-screen
-purple = left-screen
-red = up-screen

(I think... working from memory here... colours may be different)

(*) Moving a block which is holding another block may have unexpected consequences if you ignore their 'personal gravity' directions!

(*) Grabbing a block will instantly change it's gravity to match yours, this may also have unexpected consequences

(*) Kill enemies in the obvious way (throw blocks at them)
(*) Kill enemies in the Mario way (jump on them)
(*) Kill enemies in the Jedi way (mind-project a block at them)
(*) Red 'lozenges' are teleporters
(*) Platform 'tubes' can be jumped into from below
(*) Bonuses have screwed up graphics, I think they're points only, but may have other purposes
(*) Collect bonuses by throwing blocks at them also

(*) Level 4 is a bitch, remember that you only need to cover the marked squares, you can have bits sticking out and it'll still work!

(*) You can complete a shape by throwing the last block 'through' the last square - it'll be recognised instantly so it doesn't need to be supported

Things we really needed to add before release :-

* big effect for transition between the blocks and the 'finished shape' (rotating animating smoke/sparks/dust sprites)

* more 'easy' levels before the hard ones
* more levels generally
* fix the bonus pickup graphics

* fix the bonus level bug (I think I did this, hopefully it'll be on the PC disks and re-creatable somehow)"

Peter Baron.

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/results/freetext/devious/
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Diabolik  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
Programmer: Nicola Feriola
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1992 Simulmundo

Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5
Coding: Nicola Feriola
Graphics: Ivan Venturi
Sound: N/A

A preview of an up and coming game by Italian giants Simulmundo in 1992.

Not much is known about the game, apart from the main character was based from an old italian comic, called Diabolik. The character was a thief and an assassin, the “Armakuni’s” dress is his usual look for when he’s in action. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /Diabolik

The preview itself just consists of a series of intro screens, followed by release details for other machines. So the game was due for the PC and Amiga too and actually got released. The game was actually released on the Amiga in a large series of games, all following the same style. 

http://hol.abime.net/343

The game basically was a kind of Metal Warrior/Saboteur style of game, and it seems that the C64 would have been host to a series of games. However it is likely that Simulmundo abandoned the C64 in favour of the 16-bit platforms, and hence this game was lost. Diabolik and its games appeared in around 1993 time.

More information is required on this game, including who was working on it. Quite possibly the same people who did Dylan Dog (Certainly the style was not too far off!)

In 2010, Roberto Nicoletti spoke with Ivan Venturi and Nicola Ferioli and had the following to say:

"I’ve also talked about Diabolik to Ivan Venturi and Nicola Ferioli and at first time they did not remembered at all they have worked on it. Then I showed to Ivan the screenshot of the preview and he starts to remember a bit. Nicola Ferioli did not remember Diabolik also, but when at home he found through some old diskette the development floppy, with sources included.

I guess the case could be closed: they worked on it a couple of  afternoon about 20 years ago but were too busy with other project to keep tracks in their memory. "

So within the archive we now have a disk copy of the intro containing some source code, but this is just for the intro sequence and no game. It seems the C64 intro was started, but no game was ever created with just an Amiga/PC version being produced in 1993.

Sadly it looks like a case closed on this one…

Case closed….

Contributions: Andy/AEG, Roberto Nicoletti

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/diabolik/
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Dolphin Force  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Undefined
Release Year: 1988
Programmer: Falco Paul
Musician: Edwin Van Santen
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1988 Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Falco Paul
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Edwin Van Santen

---

This neat little Uridium clone was brought to my attention by Hein Holt, which has been around for a number of years.

This game is done by none other than Falco Paul, and is one of his earlier programming efforts, and a good one at that.

This seems to be a preview, although many elements of the game are there. There are no sound effects in the game itself.

It was about 70% complete before it was cancelled. The game was actually sent to an American company (whose name is not remembered at the moment), but in the end things never materialised.

The game was sadly cancelled due to the 20CC based work taking too much time, and the lack of a dedicated artist to work on the game’s graphics.

The game was to improve upon the Uridium game play and feature a whole host of cool new features. Sadly it was never to be.

This is about as good as it gets with regards to finding more of the game. Falco’s source code was all but lost many years ago. So this is another case closed. Check out Falco’s own words about his game in "Creator Speaks".

A great little Uridium clone which sadly never quite made it…

Case closed …

Contributions: Hein Holt, Falco Paul

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Falco Paul speaks to GTW about Dolphin Force...

"I've got to confess that this was a game I did... it got to about 70% or so.

The game wasn't sold, although at some point I did have contact with an American software firm... unfortunately, I totally forgot the name of the company. I basically made the game (including graphics) on my own (although the music was by Edwin).

It was pretty much a complete rip-off from Uridium (I liked that game a lot). My main plan was to improve on Uridium gameplay and all cool new features. The game never got finished because the 20CC stuff took too much time.

Another big issue was the lack of a dedicated graphic artist...I coded most parts of the game in '86 or '87 or so (can't really remember).

Unfortunaltely, all off my source code (and comprehensive C64 disk collection) got dished by my nice brother after I was so nice to give it all to him..."

Falco Paul.

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/dolphin-force/
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Dorks Dilemma  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Undefined
Release Year: 1985
Programmer: Anthony Clarke
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1985 Gremlin Graphics
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Anthony Clarke
Graphics: Anthony Clarke
Sound: N/A

Recently,  Mark Hardisty has launched a website full of memorabilia in preparation for the launch of his new A Gremlin In The Works book.

Part of this included source code files which were donated by Anthony J Clarke, which included some C64 source files for two Gremlin Graphics games – Dork’s Dilemma and Tycoon Tex.   Hokuto Force have pieced everything together and have made these available for people to check out in an emulation form.

Dork’s Dilemma is pretty much the C16 game code and graphics, with no hardware sprites used.  It is essentially a complete conversion, but with no sound.

The game was constructed on the C64, and then wired down to the C16 to run and compile.  This is why a C64 version of the code was available, which could be compiled to get running – but the intention was always for a C16 only title.

Overall, it is a great piece of history preserved thanks to Anthony, Mark Hardisty and Hokuto Force.  Check it out!

Contributions: Hokuto Force, Mark Hardisty, Anthony Clarke

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/dorks-dilemma/
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Dr.Bazair '92  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Undefined
Release Year: 1992
Programmer: Michael Ware
Musician: Sean Connolly
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Dr Bazair 92
1992 Michael Ware

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Michael Ware
Graphics: Michael Ware, Wiggy
Sound: Sean Connolly

A very big thanks to Mauricio Muñoz Lucero for highlighting this one for us. Dr Bazair ’92 is a game which has recently surfaced thanks to the author of Warhawk digging out his unreleased software whilst he develops the new Warhawk game on the DS.

Dr Bazair ’92 is sort of a sequel to both Michael’s other game Tidemarsh, but titlewise a sequel to his game which surfaced on the likes of Your Commodore’s covertape.

This is a great little preview of a game which for reasons unknown was stopped in 1992. It was coming on very well and is a neat sort of Robotron/Spore/Puzzler type of affair with nice graphics and presentation.

It is currently incomplete – as the level sets are not quite complete. There are two versions in the download, one a later version with better graphics and more levels (and easier too). Michael on his forum has said that if anyone wishes to finish things off they can and he has the level editor, some sfx and a highscore bit of code which can be used too.

It would be nice to see someone pick this up and tidy it up a bit, but its great that Michael has preserved things. Hopefully we may get chance to add the level editors and bits to the archive.

We hope to hear a bit more from Michael about the development in the future, but here it is … A great little game!!

More soon on this game we hope…

Contributions: Mauricio Muñoz Lucero, Michael Ware

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/dr-bazair-92/
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Dragon Slayer  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Created by Hans Ippisch who was interviewed in an old magazine. A question posed to him was about any unfinished projects which were gathering dust.

His reply was that he had started on a game called "Dragon Slayer", which only one level was ever almost finished.

In this level, you can fight against a giant dragon in high resolution graphics. Graphically impressive, you couldn’t really do much apart from stare at the animations for a few seconds.

This was spread as a demo by the programmer and is all what remains of this game. No extras or additional bits exist, unless Hans Ippisch can confirm otherwise?

Promising preview, never off the start line…

Contributions: Zeldin, John M Charrouux, Rough

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/dragon-slayer/
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Drax Evilblood  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Undefined
Release Year: 1989
Developer: Deesl
Programmer: Mark Gallagher
Musician: Andrew Rodger
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Drax – Evilblood
1989 Deesl

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Mark Gallagher
Graphics: Ed Campbell
Sound: Andrew Rodger

Two games essentially, but we’ve decided to create just the one entry for this one. Drax – Evilblood was produced mostly for fun it seems in its first instance, developed by Mark Gallagher with Ed Campbell on graphics.

Previously the game was not known about until Ramos gave GTW a heads up and pointed us in the direction of Mark’s website which had the downloads. 

The game is fairly simple, and has you controlling a guy who has to kick and destroy various small creatures across a horizontally bi-directionally scrolling game. It reminds me a bit of Chameleon by Electric Dreams in some ways. The early version looks pretty dated, but its the remixed edition which really starts looking very nice indeed. 

The remixed edition features most of the titles and intro credit screens of the first game, but contains a set of (we think) previously unheard tunes from Andrew (Drew) Rodger and a vastly improved set of graphics, including a lovely hi-res overlaid main character. Controls (like in the first iteration) are quite clunky and the game is not going to blow you away, but its great to see this hard work preserved. We believe that overall the remixed game is mostly complete, but still in a preview status (Hence why we are listing it as a preview). Ian Coog has kindly done some tidy ups and those two trained versions have been added to the zip. 

Surely all of this work was meant for something commercially?…. It seems that this was a game being developed in the hope that a software house (Budget maybe?) would pick it up and release, but Mark confirms it wasn’t and was done purely for fun. 

Well worth checking out!….

Contributions: Ramos, Mark Gallagher, Ian Coog


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/drax-evilblood/
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Dreadnought  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Region: PAL
Gametype: Undefined
Release Year: 1988
Developer: Melbourne House
Programmer: John Buckley
Musician: Jason Brooke
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Dreadnought

1988 Melbourne House

Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5
Coding: John Buckley
Graphics: Stuart, Paul Windett, Mo McNulty
Sound: Jason Brooke

Updated on May 6, 2013 by fgasking - Comments  / Extras/downloads

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)

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Dreadnought was a multi-scrolling shooter being developed by Icon Design back in late 1988.  The game was coded by none other than John Buckley of Solar Jetman fame.

The aim of the game was to control a fleet of ships which would be used to protect a large scaled dreadnought ship from incoming attackers.  You would use a scanner to detect where enemies were coming from and then defend that part of the ship.  Any damage gained would need repairing by landing on the ship’s runway.

According to John, the game was actually finished as far as he remembers.  At the time though APS had a lot of programs cancelled.  Additionally, Jason Brooke was put in to do the music and sound effects, though although we have something that we believe may have been the tunes for the game – we are yet to confirm.

However, although Argus Press were thought to be the publishers – we believe it was actually Melbourne House – who advertised the game very briefly.  The advert scan we have added is from Issue 8 of ACE magazine from May 1988.

An actual preview of the game was leaked out, and shows most of the titling and one of the levels.  We’re not sure if there are more levels tucked away, but the game very much seems like a quick budget blaster that was being done.  The graphics look quite nice, though the game itself isn’t too spectacular.

Unfortunately the scanner feature actually crashes the game, so it suggests that this preview still had some way to go.  According to the crack, the game was to be released shortly.

John no longer has any of his disks, so it may be down to finding one of the graphic artists and seeing if they kept anything from back then.

Plenty more research and finding to do!  But for now, check out the preview!

Contributions: John Buckley, Ste Cork

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John Buckley speaks to GTW64 about Dreadnought:

“Yep I did Dreadnought. I think it was for Argus Press. It was all finished as I remember but APS had issues at the time and a lot of their projects got cancelled. Jason may of been penned in for the music but I cant remember. Someone called Stuart did the graphics but I cant remember his last name but he was a friend of Ste Cork who you may know.”

Jason Brooke speaks with C64.com about Dreadnought:

“Meanwhile, David Whittaker was rather busy! He wanted me to join him. Eventually, when he offered me a joint directorship in Musicon, I handed in my notice. I teamed up with him in November 1987. Loads of companies were ringing us up urgently needing music for their games. We never saw the games but were given a brief description and a couple of days to complete each task. Outrun and Pac-Land spring to mind because I liked the music I had to convert from the arcade versions.

They used to send audio tapes. I had to listen to them and reproduce them for the less capable sound chips of the home computers. As for original pieces, I remember writing Vixen for Martech. We also took on Icon Design’s in-house work which included a game called Dreadnaught. I remember playing that one through Dave’s huge loud speakers. Basslines on the C64 always sounded so much better through big speakers! I loved some of the thick sounds you could achieve on the C64.”

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/dreadnought/
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Dream Raider  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A neat little platformer this one, and something I fondly remember playing from the days of Zzap 64 and their famous megatapes.

Created by Zak Townsend after he left Ocean, Dreamraider was produced after Zak set up his own coding crew and started writing the game

You control a creature similar to the frog in Nebulus. You can collect coins, and shoot various other creatures around a huge play-area, jump up trees and going down caves etc. It featured good parallax, the graphics were average but the game played well.

After an interview with Zach in Commodore Zone, after tracking him down to owning a computer hardware company in Canterbury, it was found that only one level was made (And a bit of level two), then the game was binned as the company fell through.

Zach went on to work on Stun Runner and the doomed Race Drivin’. We may see glimpses of level two someday soon, though Zach informed GTW that he gave all his stuff to his brother, who may have long sold the disks by now. Tracking bits of level two is highly unlikely.

A nice little platformer, which may have done well…

Contributions: Zach Townsend


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/dreamraider/
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Drone Processor  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Drugbird  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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A neat and almost complete game here, where you control a fat blue penguin type creature, which flys around collecting many many objects and sweets for points, before progressing to the next level.

Each colourful level is multidirectional, and quite fast and smooth scrolling.

The game is fairly simplistic in the way you just have to collect objects and then find the exit, but its one of the nicer games which unfortunatly didn’t get completly finished.

The Drugbird preview consists of quite a few levels, a later level being too heavily bugged to progress past (Pool level). Sound is bugged too. However, the Castlepanik version apparently has less bugs and allows you to progress a little further.

Its likely that the game was meant for a mail order C64 games company, or games disk of somekind. With the game pretty much complete, its unknown why this was never finished and properly released.

Get that fat bird flying and grab those sweets!…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/drugbird/
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Dungeon Master  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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199? Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

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A rather grey attempt at Dungeon Master on the C64, quite literally with its greyscale multicolour graphic mode.

This is an ambitious project to try and attempt on the commodore, but someone had the guts to have a try, and its not too bad really.

This preview doesn’t have much to look at, apart from some impressive rooms and moving. Everything seems fairly empty otherwise.

Inventory screens are all present too, and apart fromt the lack of colour, the conversion looked like it was going well from this preview.

Its unknown why the project got shelved, or how much further it got. Much more research is needed to establish these things in the future, then who knows what GTW will dig up.

A promising conversion…

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/dungeon-master/
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Dungeons  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Eelona - Warrior Princess  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Coming soon..
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Egg Mania  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Electro Gates  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Empire Strikes Back  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
Programmer: Paul Baker
Musician: Rob Hubbard
_________________________
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198? Unknown

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Paul Baker
Graphics: Steve Green
Sound: Rob Hubbard

Brought to the attention of GTW by Commodore Zone magazine from their Star Wars special edition.

"Empire Strikes Back" is (Surprise Surprise) based on the famous Star Wars film, but is not the official game, but a rather groovy looking Defender clone.

Fans of the Atari 2600 VCS version of "Empire Strikes Back" by Parker Bros, will instantly recognise the game, with the addition of great music and cool graphics. This is essentially a conversion of the VCS game, and not the arcade (Which was vector based).

Currently GTW lacks information on the game, apart from some credits which you can find to the left. Rob Hubbard’s music has been ripped from another game, so you can assume that Rob was not to be the main musician. Maybe they had someone else in mind for later?

The exact details of the plans for the game is also quite shady too. Nothing suggests that any company were due to sell this, and only contact with the developers can shed more light.

Until then, enjoy a gorgeous parallax scrolling preview of a promising Star Wars game..

Princess Lea is going nowhere just yet…

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/empire-strikes-back/
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Enduro Racer V2  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Enduro Racer V2
1987 Electric Dreams

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Nick Pelling
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

After what was an abysmal conversion, Electric Dreams were seemingly keen to make up for some reason.

Instead of just forgetting about the conversion, a later PCW show (Zzap issue 32) had reports from Electric Dreams about
 working on a new revamped version of the game.

Now we are not sure if this would have been from the same perspective, or from a new Zaxxion perspective which was adopted by the Master System version. It is likely that they would have had a better programming team, or the same team with new techniques to improve the conversion.

But the big question is why Electric Dreams considered doing another version?….

In 2011 we had a very interesting email from Kevin Tilley who (based in Australia) had a copy of the Big Box 30 compilation by Beau Jolly. Previously I had found there to be a rather different version of Wonderboy in the compilation (with an enlarged main sprite), but Kevin’s version had a very different version of Enduro Racer in place.

A crack of this version seems to have existed for quite some time, but has been tucked away without much fuss and named “Super Enduro Racer”. The game seems unfinished with a number of glitches, but it is fairly close to completion and upon closer inspection, we noticed the words “By Orlando” written at the start.

Now Orlando is better known as Nick Pelling, and we need to find out more – but Nick has had a connection with Enduro Racer from the very start – even being credited to the game conversion that did make it (when actually it was Doug Anderson who was behind the conversion!). Was Nick behind a reworked version of the game, or was this entry actually a V1 rather than a V2?

The game feels much much better than the final version, featuring rolling hills, better graphics and better looking sprites. Speed is a bit slow though, but you can see the promise. There are about 5 stages in total too – though you can drive all over the place, and the collisions aren’t quite sorted.

Very exciting developments, we need to find out more from the developers to see what happened. There is also an interview/news snippet somewhere in one of the magazines which we feel gives things away. But how did the unfinished game come to end up on a random copy of Big Box 30, when no-one else had that version?

Close to being solved!


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/enduro-racer-v2/
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Enemy Scout  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Enemy Scout
1990 Twilight

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Harold Klink
Graphics: Martijn Althuizen
Sound: Jeroen Tel

A new GTW entered into the archives, kindly fixed up for GTW from the work disks of Harold Klink and Martijn Althuizen.

Enemy Scout is both a sideways SEU and a sideway run-along game in its early stages of development. There are a total of roughly 4 levels with some varied versions and two title screens unlinked.

The SEU part looks quite good with its score panels, but the screen area could possibly have been too small for the gameplay. The 4th level where you take control of an excellent space man running along a landscape, looks much more promising and would have no doubt been excellent had it been completed.

A lot of work was done on the game, including various bits of graphics by Martijn. Sadly interest was lost in the game and it was only ever really a demonstration of graphics and various techniques. As the C64 died out, the guys left the C64 and moved onto other platforms.

One of the title screens seems to suggest that Elite were approached to launch the game, but it was found that the game was never submitted to anyone.

All the sources of the game were examined, and this is what GTW found… the remains of Enemy Scout. A big thanks to Skeletor for examing and piecing everything together! A promising looking title which could well have provided a good blast, but at last can be examined by the public to see and think what might have been. You can also now check out the game’s sources, thanks to Harold for giving permission to put them up.

A promising title which sadly never was to see the light of day…

Contributions: Harold Klink, Martijn Althuizen, Jazzcat, Ignorance, Skeletor

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Martijn Althuizen speaks about work on Enemy Scout...

"There was no contact between us and Elite about Enemy Scout, so no, there were no plans on them publishing it. I just liked the Elite logo a lot and did some versions of it myself. Harold must have liked them and included them in the title screen because of that.

As far as I know, we never send anything of Enemy Scout to anybody. It wasn't really a game we were designing anyway. More of some things we wanted to do with parallax scrolling, multispeed scrolling, etc. etc.

There was no 'strategy' to it really, just a series of things we did and we just called all of them Enemy Scout!

There weren't any plans on building a 'real' game, so you can't say it was cancelled either. We just stopped doing stuff on the C64 and all this died with it... I was having high hopes for us to still finish Golden Pyramids II. I really pushed Harold to get him to finish it, but at some point in time he just lost interest... "
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Enforcer 2 (Level 2 Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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2008 Protovision
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: André
Graphics: André, Oliver Lindau
Sound: Heinmück

This very exciting sequel first surfaced around 2008, with two brilliant demos – showing a sequel which was very comparable to Metal Dust, but with out the Super CPU enhancements.  The parallax scrolling in particular was beautiful, and the guardians were massive!

Work halted, and seems to have halted for a very long time now – due to programmer illness.   It seemingly unlikely that the game would ever get completed, which is a massive shame – as this would be a brilliant release (especially with a cartridge edition being on the cards).

Jan Schulze helped to confirm that the game was never to be finished, with this translated post from Forum64 and the developer:

“I regret to inform you that Enforcer 2 is definitely dead. For several years, I find no longer the time that is required to such a project reasonable and not just kind of – to be completed. Work and family life have here a clear priority. That there are still people who want a completion, makes me even a little proud, but not change the fact that it would be totally unrealistic and also dishonest to assert that the game would be finished sometime yet already.”

Here are the two previews which were released, which show just how promising the game could have been.  And recently we have added some extra graphics which Oliver Lindau had done, but were not used.

It has come to light that Protovision had tried to obtain the sources from André to complete the title – but all the disks were accidently binned when clearing the attic out – so it seems that the game is sadly lost forever.

Case closed…

Contributions: Nemo, Jan Schulze, Oliver Lindau, Jakob Voos


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/enforcer-2/
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Enforcer 2 (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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2008 Protovision
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: André
Graphics: André, Oliver Lindau
Sound: Heinmück

This very exciting sequel first surfaced around 2008, with two brilliant demos – showing a sequel which was very comparable to Metal Dust, but with out the Super CPU enhancements.  The parallax scrolling in particular was beautiful, and the guardians were massive!

Work halted, and seems to have halted for a very long time now – due to programmer illness.   It seemingly unlikely that the game would ever get completed, which is a massive shame – as this would be a brilliant release (especially with a cartridge edition being on the cards).

Jan Schulze helped to confirm that the game was never to be finished, with this translated post from Forum64 and the developer:

“I regret to inform you that Enforcer 2 is definitely dead. For several years, I find no longer the time that is required to such a project reasonable and not just kind of – to be completed. Work and family life have here a clear priority. That there are still people who want a completion, makes me even a little proud, but not change the fact that it would be totally unrealistic and also dishonest to assert that the game would be finished sometime yet already.”

Here are the two previews which were released, which show just how promising the game could have been.  And recently we have added some extra graphics which Oliver Lindau had done, but were not used.

It has come to light that Protovision had tried to obtain the sources from André to complete the title – but all the disks were accidently binned when clearing the attic out – so it seems that the game is sadly lost forever.

Case closed…

Contributions: Nemo, Jan Schulze, Oliver Lindau, Jakob Voos
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Epsilon  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Our next GTW entry comes in the form of a Slapfight style vertical scrolling shoot-em-up which was being produced by Paul Hughes.

It was originally assumed to have been produced for Ocean, but we find that in fact the game was meant for Rainbird Software back in 1988.  You’ll find out how in a bit.

The game name was criticised by Paul himself, and feels it was quite crap. Not sure if the game name would have been changed somewhere down the line.  Epsilon has stuck ever since though.

The game never got fully completed, and it seems that Paul and Dawn got dragged onto other projects – meaning that this was shelved.

Paul gavs hope by stating that the game is most likely on a few ST disks in his parents attic, and once he gets a chance, he will be having a dig through and converting the remains for us to put out and show the world.

Recently we had confirmation from Paul that Dawn Drake did all the graphics, but sadly these were assumed lost when Dawn sold Paul’s C128 setup to Martin Holland who sadly passed away in 2003.  Martin was thought to have had all of Dawn’s disks, but it seems there was a mis-communication.  It was found in 2012 that Martin had borrowed some of Dawn’s disks to just test out until he found his own.

The disks were returned to Dawn, who when questioned about another game in the archives, mentioned she had a bundle of disks which GTW64 could take a look at.  That we did, and we were very surprised to find some early builds of Epsilon.

One preview unfortunately would not start correctly – but Martin Pugh very kindly fixed things up, and the preview shows a slightly different build with Terra Cresta sprites.  There is also a high score mode tucked away which they unlocked.  You can check things out for yourself by downloading the previews here.

It is hoped that maybe some day we can find more of the game – especially as it is such a promising looking game.  Graphically it feels superb in places, especially the hi-res ship version.  Sonically it is strong, but just features test music by Jon Dunn at the moment, ripped from another Ocean game – seems to suit it well though!

More soon we very much hope for this one!

Contributions: Paul Hughes, Martin Pugh, Jazzcat, Dawn Drake

---

Paul Hughes speaks about Epsilon:

"Looking through the code for a version of Epsilon - heavens knows which version I randomly grabbed (!), but bits of it got the synapses sparking - it has various pick ups and a few different types of laser - a few defender like bolts, some bullets, chase pickups a la nemesis and a big "banana" ray a la Terra Cresta.

I used to have a batch of disks called the Wimpy Disks (the name came from Nick Pelling of Frak! fame) - which were "construction" disks - disks of common routines - scrollers, multiplexors, music drivers, sprite movement sequencers etc - so I was always throwing bits and bobs of demos together to see which one sort of clicked. I'm guessing I didn't do much more as the around that time the 68000 was just appearing, and I was getting heavily into 3D.

The Scorpion was Rocky the Lobster from Vindicator (one of Simon Butlers I believe - the label looks like his hand writing) - as Dawn was predominantly a Spectrum/Amstrad artist I think she got some sprites from Simon to show some of the overlay techniques he used to use.

I think "dawny's map editor" was something I knocked together for editing 4x4 block maps. Shortty's editor was something that Allan wrote whilst he was over at Origin for 2100 AD - there were Visa problems so he came back to the UK and started at Ocean again - his sprite and map editors were nicely developed so he let me use them - around this time Ocean switched to using an ST based sprite and map editor for all the platforms."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/epsilon/
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Escape from Colditz  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Escape From Colditz
1991 Digital Magic

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Miles Barry, Ste Pattullo
Graphics: Jon Law
Sound: Miles Barry, Richard Rinn, Marc Francois, Sean Connolly

A very much awaited game which many a C64 person can remember. 1991 saw the introduction of a new C64 game based on the famous German POW prison, “Colditz”.

The game was based on an an isometric 3D map, in the same vein as Ocean’s “Great Escape”, but with full colour and no monocrome graphics. Not only that, but many new ideas and features to create a much better game of the style. The sheer scale of the game was immense, and technically very impressive due to its creative team onboard.

Miles Barry, a talented programmer, who didn’t have much luck with getting his work released, was the guy behind this very game. As was Jon Law, who worked on the classic First Samurai, doing the fantastic graphic work. Music was well crafted by Richard Rinn, or Deek as he’s known by us all. Code was also worked on by Steven Pattullo, at the start, who people may remember as the creator of the Limbo games for CDU back in the late 80′s.

There was disagreements though, and Ste left Digital Magic and moved on. Miles picked up the game, but started fresh with a new engine, but using the same graphics from Jon Law (Who apparently got drunk one night and changed all the sprites to women to make a Prisoner Cell Block H clone for fun – according to Ste Pattulo)… Anyway!….

The graphics were ported from the Amiga, and were compressed into 6k for the chars, and 4k for each of the 120 rooms.

People actually thought the game had been finished, and Commodore Format got a few hearts racing when promoting its review in Issue 12, only to have nothing actually inside the magazine.

The game never appeared, and screenshots were all that remained, and some juicy details of what was going to be.

“What happened?”, I hear you ask… well Digital Magic, the creators of this fine game, unfortunatly ran up debts of up to £100,000 and thus the company went under. Unfortunately so did the game, which was not completed at the time. No other company bought the rights to the licence from Gibson games, and so the game was finally laid to rest.

What did happen, was that a preview actually got sneaked out, which included a full introduction and pretty much most of what the game ever was.

This preview is available to download from here, but be warned, it is very bugged and you may find that your character gets stuck a lot of the time. However, with some recent perseverance, I discovered there was much more to this preview than I originally thought, and found that almost the entire game map is complete in this preview, which is huge. The guards are inactive, there is some interaction, and of course there are plenty of bugs. If you can’t reach the later parts, the screenshots show much of what to expect.

GTW has attempted to find Miles Barry to talk more about this game, and to discover whether there exists a more advanced preview of this game. Good sources reveil that hope in finding anything more is remote, due to most of Miles’ work being on PDS, which would have been wiped years ago.

Recently in 2012, Sean Connolly suggested that his Quota loader music was originally intended as the loader tune for Escape from Colditz.   Marc Francois also did a tune which was unused like Sean’s.  We are not sure which tune this is.  We have added Sean’s Quota loader tune as part of this entry for now.

A lovely preview (Albeit, bugged), unfortunate casulty of debt…

Contributions: Jason Kelk, Andrew Fisher, http://www.Zzap64.co.uk, Ste Pattullo

---

Ste Pattullo speaks to GTW about work on Escape From Colditz...

"Just found your website, I did indeed program Escape from Colditz on the 64 after working freelance for a number of magazines. I did do a lot of work for popular computign weekly and commodore computing international. I spent a long time on Colditz using just laser genius and no development system (what a drag!!!) I am now 35, married and live in Rhuddlan in North Wales . There is not much call for commodre 64 programmers anymore so I now work as a hypnotist. Yes I have to admit I did write the Limbo games and did anyone actually type in my first game from PCW, it was UFO and it was dire!!!

I left DMS in 1991 when i thought the company was in trouble. I went to work for ICI and left poor old MIles Barry to Colditz. I think I may have a copy somewhere.

I may still have a copy of colditz somewhere at my mums house, I will do my best to dig it out for you. I think in the version I have all of the guards have changed to women as the graphic artist came in drunk one night and changed it into Prisoner cell block H!!

My list of games as far as I can remeber is:- Ufo Sphere Ufo2 Limbo Limbo2 Most of my magazine articles were on 6502 programming, and I had loads of stuff published in the 80's and 90's. I also programmed a load of routines for people to use in their games such as sprite movers and scrollers.

Before colditz I worked on the arcade game Vinicators for Tengen but I was working on someone elses code who left. I told Tengen that I wanted to re-writre it from scratch but they said no. I told them I was not prepared to carry on with the project. They then offered me Dragon Spirit but I turned them down.

Digital Magic was a great company to work for. At the time we were all very young and from early days it was not hard to see that the company was in trouble (late wages, cheques bouncing ect.) However I really enjoyed my time there and it was not un-common to go to work at 2 in the morning after staggering out of a night club!!

Platformania never got finished, it was a manic miner style game but with 2 players playing at once. It was very tacky but I am sure I still have that somewhere. The games I wrote for the magazines were very basic as i concentrated more on the programming articles. The games were written quickly and I was paid quite well for them.

My first published game UFO in 1986 netted me about £250, not bad for a 16 year old back then as all my mates were on about 20 odd quid a week on a YTS scheme! When I wrote Limbo2 the magazine asked me to write a diary of the game. I have still got that it you want me to send you it then lets me know and I will post it to you.

At the moment I am not on the internet at home so if I do not get back to you straight away then don't worry I will do in due course. Anyway nice to hear from you, it has dragged up a few memories, anything else you want to know the please get in touch.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/escape-from-colditz/
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Escape from Mars (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Escape From Mars
1992 Exclusive Designs

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Eody Scholten
Graphics: Marlon Regien
Sound: Mark Bramer

Now its getting hard… as the reviewing gets bog down, I keep coming across countless shooters, some real stinkers but some like this which look the business for the future, but get thrown away like the trash.

Escape From Mars has the basic elements present which make the game look a stunning sideways SEU, although the game lacks any real playability. Put that down to another early version, and a keen graphic artist! (Check that lovely ship!)  

Music also makes good company for the nice graphics, so did a later version (Or even a final game we wish!) feature the playability aswell?…. Or was it all but a cover up?  

But for now at last… some credits!, and some names which can be searched around for to find out more on this nice little preview.

Nice to look at, almost as nice to play…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/escape-from-mars/
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Evasion  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1988 Ubi Soft
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Frederic Kauffmann
Graphics: Frederic Kauffmann
Sound: Unknown

A short entry for a title flagged up to us by Dan Warren, which is listed as being an Ubi Soft game – but from a bit of initial digging around, we couldn’t find any reference to it online apart from its entry in GB64.

The game is a neat looking isometric game (like Head Over Heels) and was written and designed by a chap called Frederic Kauffman, and is listed as a 1988 release – however it doesn’t seem to be finished, as there is no sprite collision or anything to actually do.

What was this game exactly and was it really for Ubisoft?    And how did it sneak out?

Possibly only Frederic himself may know, so hopefully in time we will find him to ask him more about the game.  In the meantime, do you know anything about it?   Maybe it was finished under a different name?

Contributions: Dan Warren, Gamebase 64


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/evasion/
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Exodus  (Activision)  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1989 Activision
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Paul Clansey
Graphics: Tony Hetherington
Sound: N/A

Exodus was to be a very ambitious wargame which was described by its developer as a mix of Elite, Civilisation and Traveller RPG. Paul Clansey was the C64 developer and shed some light on a development not really mentioned in the press, as you can read in “Creator Speaks”.

Whilst Paul coded the C64 edition, Ian Weatherburn was producing the ST edition around 1988-89 for a company called New Frontier Productions.  The game was designed by Tony Hetherington and there were possibly others working on the ST version with Ian.   It seems that based from Amiga Power magazine, the game was intended for release by Activision in late 1989.

The game itself was a space RPG and economic trading wargame, which was very ambitious for the team and very well presented (with excellent graphics by Tony).   Proper storyboards and sketches were produced throughout the development as part of the planning (which sadly seem to be lost to time now).

Paul felt it was a mash up of best bits from other games, and needed work to tie it all together, but there were struggles with getting the wireframe sequences running at a decent speed on the C64 in particular.  Over time, the company were not happy at all with progress, and it was cancelled before it could get much further.

In 2016, Paul was sorting out his notes and materials to help with a magazine interview, when he uncovered a disk of a demo sent to EA at the time.   This was sent to GTW and fully preserved, and now with Paul’s permission we are able to present the final version of the game as it stood.

There are two parts in total.  It seems the first part of Exodus (“trd” on the disk) is the trading part of the game.  This has the menu system in place and a lot of options to play with.   The second part (“arc” on the disk) is the arcade/Elite wireframe part.    Load the “LOADT” and “LOADA” files to load either part in correctly.

At the moment, we don’t fully understand what it is you have to do or what all the controls are, but Paul will hopefully shed some more light soon when he’s had chance to play through and work things out again.

As you will see, the wireframe part is unfortunately very slow – but it is likely there could have been improvements had time been given.   It does look very impressive even at this early stage.

Check out a promising title that was never to be, and we hope to have more details on it soon.

Contributions: Paul Clansey

---

Paul Clansey talks about work on Exodus:

“I was coding the C64, Ian Weatherburn the ST, it was sometime around 1988-90. I think that the company was New Frontier Productions (don’t know what else they did) and that it was designed by Tony Hetherington.

The design- a space RPG and strategic economic wargame- was extremely ambitious and impressively presented (looked like a lot of effort had been invested in storyboards and professional-looking sketches for the graphics).

At the time, I felt it was a mashup of great bits from other games (albeit with a story/rationale of its own) which would need a lot of additional on-the-fly detailed design work to make it all work well together. As it turned out, I got bogged down trying to get satisfactory 3D wireframe performance, the company weren’t happy with coding progress for C64 or ST, so it was pulled (I cant remember who else was work ing on the different versions, or if anyone did further work), which tragically led to Ian’s suicide.”


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/exodus-2/
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Exodus  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Exodus was to be a side scrolling shoot em up that owed it’s inspiration to Battlestar Galactica. A kind of cross between Defender and Uridium.

The game was previously unknown by many until Darren Melbourne shed some light on the game out of the blue. This was to be a game published by Nexus, who were most famous for their American Football game, Hades Nebula and Nexus the game.

This particular game consisted of a variety of levels. Each level was to feature ten massive craft that the player had to defend from swarms of invading enemies. Flying back and forth amongst the fleet the player had to control both himself and his wingment to combat enemies, repair damaged craft and safely see them through the jumpgates and to safety. It apparently looked very impressive.

The game was shaping up very nicely very early on and was hoping to be published by Nexus, but sadly Nexus went into administration and the game sadly never got published as a result. The game was stuck at its very early stage of development

It was never sold on to anyone else, so sadly Exodus was to rot away. A huge shame, as Ned’s graphics were reportedly excellent in the game, and would be very nice to see. Sadly Ned no longer has anything of the game, and neither does Richard who got in touch recently about the game.

So who would have a copy of the game?… we weren’t sure, but we recently found a set of source files which seemed to have the remains of the game. Certainly the charsets are in place, but the map graphics and sprites may be missing. How much can be reconstructed?

Well, Jani Tahvanainen has painstakingly put the game together and has helped us to present a preview showing the early title screen, an asteroids sequence and the main game.  It isn’t fully playable, but another one saved and certainly worth a look.  The main ships within the game are very impressive, all constructed from just the one character set as Darren originally mentioned – just scroll from left to right to see the variations.

Thanks to Jani, you can now check out what is probably the last remaining version of the game.  This is pretty much as far as the game ever got sadly, and we may never know if it would have done well – another one saved though in its final state.

Case closed!

Contributions: Darren Melbourne, Rick Paynter, Ned Langman, C64.com, Jani Tahvanainen

---

Richard Paynter speaks about work on Exodus...

"Spotted your site whilst randomly googling and noticed myself on there as Rick Paynter (how I used to be known at school). I did indeed know the guys at Paranoid Software back in 86/87 when I was 16/17. I was a commodore 64 programmer back then, although only completed onc game "Worron" for Firebird, which never got released.

I did undertake the programming on the game "Exodus", but if memory serves me right, I was too young, too interested in University and A'Levels plus the 64 'scene' and the associated company's were dying.

The game was never completed, only about 50%, was certainly not ready for release... although Ned Langman's graphics were superb. I've not seen or heard from the guys in 20 years. Since then, I've gone on to be a software developer in the defence and financial industries, writing the head up display for the Euro Fighter back in the early 1990s. More recently, I have also become a professional musician writing music for television and film, most notably the recent Land Rover advert with Ewan McGregor.

I got involved with Exodus when I met Paranoid Software via some chap called Charles Lawrence (we used to hang around Regal Software in Gillingham) who lived in Medway (where I was living at the time). Charles invited me up to Paranoid's offices in Beckenham to meet Darren Melbourne, Ned Langman and Mark Greenshields... and we hung out for a bit. I agreed to write Exodus for them, Ned Langman already having some impressive graphics put together.
I forget the details of what happened next, but I think everyone lost interest and the scene was changing. I would be interested in Darren's details actually - drop him a line... I think he still has a video of mine from 20 years back :) What is he up to these days?

Funnily enough, things have come full circle as I now would be interested in getting into video games from a musical perspective... So in conclusion, not sure I'm worth a slot on your web-site... :) Good luck with the site... a worthy cause I feel.

Funny to have found this link.
My website is www.richardpaynter.com"

Not long after Exodus was reconstructed, Richard fed back:

"Wow - that was a blast from the past!

Thank whoever got involved in that for resurrecting that little lot. Strange to see a window into your childhood when I wrote it (I was 17).

If you scroll along, you'll see all the other ships. Superb graphics. Nice swearing on the title page as well Richard! Haha! Even to this day, I still use uppercase profanity in the log when debugging trading software. Stands out more than anything else. Some things never change."

Ned Langman speaks about work on Exodus...

"I unfortunately lost the discs that had all the artwork but it was similar in style to Uridium. The game was to play like Defender but instead of rescuing humanoids you would defend giant starships.

I don't remember who we were developing the game for but I recall them wanting to change the name to Long Haul. I think Exodus had already been used."

Darren Melbourne speaks about work on Exodus...

"The graphics were nothing short of incredible for the time and featured ten huge spacecraft (think Battlestar Gallactica) which were constantly under attack from the forces of The Emperor Hades (See Hades Nebula).

The player had to fly around the ten ships as they moved through quadrants of space reaching jump gates that would allow them to enter hyper space and to eventually make it to Earth and safety. Rick had the scroll and the mini map/scanner working (map and scanner in the top border and other info in the bottom) and some of the rudimentary code such as star fields etc.

However, when Nexus pulled out of the games industry and pulled our funding the game became another of those Games That Never Were!! "


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/exodus/
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Extreme Force  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Extreme Force
1989 Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Amanda Wynne
Graphics: Julian Francois
Sound: Marc Francois, Sean Connolly

Yet another game which gets thrown into the archives, brought to GTW’s attention by Jason Kelk, and also released from the man himself.

Extreme Force featured graphics by Julian Francois and was coded by his then girlfriend Amanda Wynne. This is a promising game which plays slightly like a combination of Trantor and Great Gurianos.

The game features massive graphics (especially the main character who is quite impressive) and a reasonable perspective effect on the floor, which was certainly impressive for its time.

Music and sound effects were composed by both Marc Francois and Sean Connolly, though not all the tunes were fully implemented in the game, and only really Sean’s SFX and a tune by Marc have been used in the preview which you can check out.

Playability wise, you mainly just shoot as much as you can, while changing direction at will and crouching to reach the smaller creatures. Pressing space will change your weapons. It basically is at a very early stage in the preview.

Once you reach the end of the screen, you will get a congratulations message, and will encounter a rather neat menu system which was for the game and a superb piece of music by Marc Francois. If you click on EXIT, the game will crash out.

The game was never fully completed, due to Julian and his girlfriend splitting up. Had they stayed together, then no doubt the game would have likely been completed.

It is a shame, as this is certainly a promising game. It would have needed a lot of work to it to make it extra special from the rest, but certainly it was getting there.

Hopefully in the future we will hear from Julian himself, and maybe even his girlfriend to find out more about this cool little preview. But for now, check out yet another game that never was…

A exciting game… though lost along with the relationship sadly..

Contributions: Jason Kelk, Marc Francois, Andrzej Wilk

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/extreme-force/
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Eye of the Beholder (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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2006 Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Andreas Larsson
Graphics: Andreas Larsson
Sound: Unknown

An unofficial conversion of the popular PC game, and one which was looking very impressive when the preview was released back in 2006.

Unfortunately though it is looking like the project has stalled after 8 years, and it is unlikely that it will see completion – which is a shame!

If you know otherwise, please let us know and we’ll move it to the list of games which are still in production!


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/eye-of-the-beholder/
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Fade To Black  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1999 Threshold Productions
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Jason Swift, Jon Mines
Graphics: Jason Swift
Sound: Unknown

When I originally downloaded this unfinished title, I was thinking “This can’t be the same Fade To Black that I played many years ago on my PC?”… And of course, it wasn’t… Not a 3D based game, but a RPG.

This RPG is in a very early stage, with nothing much working apart from a simple map which can be scrolled around in a little window.

There is no linked background or story to this game, but a few credits and that is all.  Jon Mines recently got in touch via the comments and detailed that the preview was released by NTSC64.com, pretty much like a cover disk release.    It seems that interest was lost in the game’s development.

There was nothing really more to the game, and nothing else will come of the game.  Jon has suggested that maybe in the future, the work disks could be released.  If that is the case, then we’ll be sure to put them here with Jon’s permission.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/fade-to-black/
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Fallen_ The  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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For the more recent gaming news Errazking has spent his time developing and releasing games for the ZX Spectrum, games such as 'Abu Sinver Propagation' and even 'Deep Blue' come to mind. But after a short gap in C64 goodness with games like Deep Blue, it wasn't until now he's made available an early C64 preview called ' The Fallen Special Edition ', which was created for the past Retro Barcelona, ​​has been used in a points championship and is not expected to be a fully finished game until next year.

In this new preview with music by the awesome Richard Bayliss, you play as a soldier defending his wall from an invading force. You must make your bow and arrow ready with a quick trigger and pull the bow back for a well armed shot to take out as many enemies as possible for an ever high score. Be careful though, as if too many enemies get through and you are hit by a ball of flames, you'll get damaged and the game will end up being a game over.

And that's pretty much the core game play of the preview so far, but from what I've played it's rather nice and I'm glad it's something different other than the constant stream of platformers!


http://www.indieretronews.com/2017/10/the-fallen-special-edition-c64-fire.html
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Fast Food  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Faster than Light  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Coming soon..
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Fears Of Darkness  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Fears Of Darkness
1994 Falk Troeger

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Falk Troeger
Graphics: Falk Troeger
Sound: Matt Gray

Fears of darkness was the result of a budding programmer at the age of 18 wishing to produce a "Turrican-esq" game. 64er magazine had released Manfred Trenz’s Katakis Development System which was to be the inspiration for Falk to get programming Fears of Darkness.

Coding was carried out and also the graphic work too, right up until 1994. Falk sent the preview version to a guy in Fulda who mentioned that he would like to help him release the game when its finished. It seems that he just crack released it instead.

Still – Falk continued with the game and added various features (Some of which can be read about in "Creator Speaks"). The game music just contained some quickly ripped music from Last Ninja 2. However, due to the C64 dying out and other various bits and pieces, Falk decided to call time on the project and it was cancelled in late 1994. A shame, because the preview is very promising and this would have been a very well recieved game had it been finished and released.

We hope to get hold of some more remains of the game up until cancellation from Falk in the future, but for now check out this very promising preview and the Creator Speaks page…

Contributions: Falk Troeger

---

Falk Troeger speaks to GTW about Fears of Darkness...

"I´ve never known that someone released and "cracked" my preview version. Funny...

The whole thing started in 1992 as the 64er-mag released Manfred Trenz´s Katakis Development System. I just had turned 18 and thougth by myself: "Its time to make some "Turrican"-like game. Or so." Pure megalomania. ;-)

I started painting some level graphic and sprites and begun coding... until 1994.

I sent a preview version to a guy in Fulda. He said he would like to help me releasing the game when its finished. As I know now he obviously decided to "crack-release" it. ;-)

I worked further on the game, so there are:

* new enemies and traps: a turning stone, fireballs, arrows, disks
 * doors (you needed a key to open it)
 * a pushable pillar to disable the spiked turning somethings for a short time
 * additional "world 1" graphics in the level
 * some "world 2" graphics
 * a "turbo loader" for the 1541 that worked nice while IRQs are enabled

Maybe some floppies still work. If so I can send you some shots of this material.

I ripped the music from "Last Ninja 2" and relocated it from $4000 to $1000 by changing some $4x bytes that seemed to look like pointers. Can´t believe that this have worked. ;-) In late 1994 I dicided to cancel this project..."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/fears-of-darkness/
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Fight for Freedom  (Preview V2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Fight For Freedom
1993 Victrix

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Erik van Ginniken
Graphics: Peter van Driel
Sound: Unknown

This is a title I first saw and my jaw dropped when I saw how great it looked. This was back in about 1993 and the magazine was Commodore Force, and they used to have a PD section which took a look at various demos and disk magazines. One particular disk magazine had a preview of "Fight For Freedom", which was the very game I talk about now.

This game was brought to my attention again by Richard Bayliss, who also saw the game in the same place. It seems this great looking little game never quite got finished.

It is a kind of "Wizard Of Wor" clone, with flash graphics and nice animations. However, from the preview.. things are lacking and maps are quite shallow to run around in. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal to do apart from shoot each other. By pressing some keys on the keyboard, you are able to select different weapons, including a sheild to reflect bullets away.

There seems to be some kind of Pacman style transporter in place, but its not working in the preview.

But was the game completed?… Well, sadly it wasn’t and all that remains it seems is to be about 4 levels and some unused graphics. Jazzcat recently fixed up some remains which were sent to him, which include some previously unseen graphics of the game’s loading screen and some other unused test graphics. This could possibly be it. There was sadly no music. Check out the download for the new additions.

Certainly, this seems to be a simple game made for a German Disk Magazine, which never got quite completed. A shame really. Hopefully we will hear more from Peter himself very soon.

More to come we hope…

Contributions: Richard Bayliss, Hein, Jazzcat


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/fight-for-freedom/
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Fight for Freedom  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1993 Victrix
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Erik van Ginniken
Graphics: Peter van Driel
Sound: Unknown

This is a title I first saw and my jaw dropped when I saw how great it looked. This was back in about 1993 and the magazine was Commodore Force, and they used to have a PD section which took a look at various demos and disk magazines. One particular disk magazine had a preview of "Fight For Freedom", which was the very game I talk about now.

This game was brought to my attention again by Richard Bayliss, who also saw the game in the same place. It seems this great looking little game never quite got finished.

It is a kind of "Wizard Of Wor" clone, with flash graphics and nice animations. However, from the preview.. things are lacking and maps are quite shallow to run around in. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal to do apart from shoot each other. By pressing some keys on the keyboard, you are able to select different weapons, including a sheild to reflect bullets away.

There seems to be some kind of Pacman style transporter in place, but its not working in the preview.

But was the game completed?… Well, sadly it wasn’t and all that remains it seems is to be about 4 levels and some unused graphics. Jazzcat recently fixed up some remains which were sent to him, which include some previously unseen graphics of the game’s loading screen and some other unused test graphics. This could possibly be it. There was sadly no music. Check out the download for the new additions.

Certainly, this seems to be a simple game made for a German Disk Magazine, which never got quite completed. A shame really. Hopefully we will hear more from Peter himself very soon.

More to come we hope…

Contributions: Richard Bayliss, Hein, Jazzcat



http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/fight-for-freedom/
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Fight Run  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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2006 Hein Holt
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Hein Holt
Graphics: Hein Holt

A very quick entry for a title that was being developed by Hein Holt in 2006.

Fight Run is a cool early single screen fighter game, with a number of options available to play.    There is a limited amount of moves that you can do overall, but then this is an early preview.

Hein had the following to say about the game:

“The game was supposed to be a mix between Bruce Lee and Street Fighter II. The idea was to have a movie-set with B-movie actors such as Michael Dudikoff, Bud Spencer, David Hasselhoff as ‘skilled’ fighter characters and a movie-director as judge. I remember that the game engine was a total spaghetti mess. Started and abandoned in 2006”

It certainly looks very promising, and a shame it never quite made it.

Thanks to Hein, you can check it out for your self.  Enjoy!


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/fight-run/
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Fire Pit  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Firebird  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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1994 Sven Forstmann

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Sven Forstmann
Graphics: Sven Forstmann
Sound: N/A

Following on from Lost Robot 2 is another preview of a game which seems to have not quite made it. Markt & Technik are believed to have been the people who would have published the game, as the name is mentioned in the preview.

What we have here is a truely awesome demonstration/preview of a game where you control a bird or a fly across a Shadow of the Beast style 13 layer parallax landscape. The effect is far greater than Ocean’s Shadow of The Beast, and also includes some impressive colour mixing.

There is not really any gameplay to be found here, but you can move the bird or fly around on the screen (With the ability to switch between players like in Donkey Kong Country). We’re not sure what the aim of the game would have been.

The game was coded in assembly using the Action Reply Monitor, and for reasons unknown was ditched. We hope to find out soon what the plans were for this game and why it was cancelled in the end…

More soon we hope…

Contributions: Andreas Wirooks


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/firebird/
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Fireblaster  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1993 Prism Leisure
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Jason Kelk
Graphics: Jason Kelk
Sound: Sean Connolly

A surprise entry now for GTW64, which was to be an obscure conversion of an obscure Amiga/ST game called Fireblaster, which seemingly was released in 1986 and then re-released by Prism Software around 1989.

Jason Kelk was the developer of a C64 conversion, which was practically complete – 95% complete to be precise and just requiring some final bug fixing.

Interestingly, Jason suggests that the game was submitted as a conversion to Prism back in 1993, but for reasons currently unknown was not published – maybe as the C64 was on its way out?

The game utilizes some graphics from Cyberwing and is as playable as the final release.   At present it seems to stop after a few waves.

Thanks to Jason, we are now able to bring you the final version of the game to play for the first time, which was recovered from some of Jason’s work disks.  As you can see, the game is a simple blaster, but well worth a look with some snazzy presentation as you’d expect from Jason.

Enjoy!

Contributions: Jason Kelk

---

Jason Kelk speaks about work on Fireblaster:

“During the early 1990s Prism Leisure were supplying software to Computerworld (the computer shop I used to work at) with games including a budget range called 16-Bit Pocket Power that were single 3.5” floppies in little plastic wallets that arrived in a cardboard display for shop counters.

Fireblaster was one of the games for the Amiga and Atari ST, a painfully simple and clunkily programmed gallery shooter that failed to showcase the 16-bit machines.

The idea for a C64 port was a spur of the moment thing; I was at a trade show with some of the people from the computer shop I worked in as we looked for new stock lines to consider carrying and Prism were there, pushing a couple of ranges. I wandered over and asked someone with a suit if they’d consider a C64 port of Fireblaster if I were to produce it and he showed an interest but, stupidly, I didn’t take a card or anything… and after getting things done to the point it was playable,

I fell out of love with the idea because it just felt only slightly less cheap and cheerless than the original.

A lot of Fireblaster’s in-game code and some of the presentation stuff like the title page was transferred to my vertical shooter Cyberwing so it didn’t go to waste.”


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/fireblaster/
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Flashback  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1995 EBES
Status: Preview, Findability: 1/5

Coding: Russ Michaels
Graphics: Russ Michaels
Sound: Unknown

In the early 90’s, the 16-bits were greeted by a new style of adventure game with a character not far off from that of Impossible Mission. Another World and Flashback by Delphine were two of the biggest breakthrough’s of their time, with amazing animations and interluding sequences. It was the shape of the future.

Never in a million years would you think that it would make the C64, but Russ Michaels thought otherwise. With the amount of C64 upgrades available from CMD in America, and with the hope that people in the UK would buy this hardware, a game like Flashback was thought a lot more possible, even its animated sequences. But even the game was planned for standard C64’s, without the video footage.

This ambitious project would require a Ramcard/Ramlink to be played, due to the video footage in the game. The game would therefore remain faithful to the other 16-bit incarnations, featuring all the levels, animations, soundtracks, cut-scenes. After seeing Vermes’ Another World style intro in a standard C64, it was not hard to see the possiblities of it being a reality.

Russ Michaels pushed out his idea to the C64 UK public, releasing a small two screen slideshow to the subscribers of Commodore World magazine who recieved the free disk with each issue. Russ gave the option for people to pre-order the game for around £12.99. If enough people showed interest, the project would go ahead.

Unfortunatly with no pre-orders recieved, the game plan was scrapped. Leaving remains of just a slideshow to get people dreaming. After talking to Russ, it seems that a little more was done than just two screens. Infact, pretty much of the first level was ported over and most of the character animations and collision detections were complete. All graphics were ported from the Amiga, and required some heavy tidying up, which Russ did for the majority of images (Including those in the slideshow).

Russ unfortunately gave all his disks away, though one person who did obtain some of the disks is currently looking to see if they have anything.   Recently though a slideshow was recovered thanks to Kevin Tilley, which includes another Flashback convert screen.

Ambitious, but thats about it.. More to see soon though I hope.

Contributions: Jason Kelk, Russ Michaels, Kevin Tilley

---

Russ Michaels speaks about work on Flashback…

“The entire first level (jungle) was digitised from Amiga and ported over to the C64. All the screens needed to be seriously touched up on the c64 to convert into 16 colours. the screens in the slideshow were the ones that had been cleaned up.

The sprites and animations of the main character were mainly done, and I had done some work on the bitmap collision detection so that he could walk on the level..
I had a bitmap level editor for building the flashback levels and had some of level graphics already built in the level editor. ”

Russ Michaels.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/flashback/
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Flimbo's Quest v1  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1990 System 3
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Laurens van der Donk, Dave Hogendorf, Patrick Witteman
Graphics: Arthur van Jole, Jacco van het Riet
Sound: Reyn Ouwehand, Johannes Bjerregård

Ok, i’m at the risk of stretching things a bit too much – but I thought it would be a nice inclusion into the archive to show a slightly different preview of Flimbo’s Quest.  Ah well, sod it! 🙂

This fairly late preview includes a very different title screen, and a slightly slower main character and sfx in places.  There have been previews of the game out there before, but not one with differences like this from what I could find.  I hope you find it interesting anyway!

The final game was of course released, and was even featured as a pack-in title for the C64GS on cartridge.   It was a nice and cute Hawkeye clone which was very enjoyable.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/flimbos-quest-v1/
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Fox (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Fox
1996 Isthmus

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Lucas Pope and Pete Gonzalez
Graphics: Lucas Pope
Sound: N/A

Fox was a game being produced by Lucas Pope and Pete Gonzalez back in 1995-1996, and was to be a sort of cross between (obviously!) Fox Fights Back and Turrican (In terms of game style) and also includes a very early (but impressive) Doom-styled level. I’m not sure if the developers were influenced in any way by Fox Fights Back, but maybe they were enough to go ahead and create a spiritual sequel of sorts?

The game preview indicates a number of 2D multi-scrolling levels, with some 3D Doom-styled sub sections for certain parts of the game (Maybe when you enter a tunnel/fox hole?).

It’s all quite early stages without much interaction/gameplay – but it is a vast preview with a series of sections to explore with your (rather glitchy at this stage) fox. The 3D section puts you in the view of the fox, and you can see the top of the fox’s head, with ears that turn as you turn – a cool little effect. It’s a neat little package which is well worth checking out and gives a glimpse of a game which could have been a lot of fun had it been completed.

The developers have very kindly passed over all the source code and have allowed it to be released along with their game itself. So feel free to grab and take a look. Maybe someone could finish it all off?

A big thanks to Jazzcat for finding remains of the game, tidying up, packing and docs for the preview!

We don’t fully know why the game halted production, but we think it was due to the lack of a market at that time, as its likely this would have been a title sold when the market was completely drying up. Hopefully we may learn more about the game’s fate from the developers soon!

But for now, check out this promising preview and have a think about what could have been!

The spiritual sequel to Fox Fights Back that never was…

Contributions: Peter Weighill, Jazzcat, Bartek



http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/fox/
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Frixxion  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Fussball  (preview)
Alternative title: Killa Plants
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Killerplants
199? Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

This early preview puts you in the control of a nicely animated spaceman, running around and jumping over various vegetated objects over a short horizontal push scroll map.

Glitches are everywhere in this early preview, and some errie music has been added to make this game feel even more strange than it already is.

There are very few enemies to contend with, so reaching the end is quite simple. The actual end of the preview shows some kind of credits are the top which are unreadable, due to some kind of corruption possibly, while the whole map scrolls again.

It’s hard to comment how promising this game is, especially without any real background to the game, and credits are lacking, so asking about the game to its creators will be another tough job for the GTW team.

We believe that the game is called Killerplants, though it has been released under the name of Fussball at a later date.   So do you know anything more about it?

In space, no one can hear this one scream…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/killerplants/
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Future World  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1996 Cherry Software

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Henrik Hagberg
Graphics: Mathias Hedblom, Philippe R. Henry
Sound: Jesper Andersson

Elite is undoubtfully one of the masterpieces of space exploration games in the history of computing, and there isn’t really an enthusiast or game player above the age of 18 who hasn’t heard of the game.

Nothing has really beaten the original 1985 classic, and very much so in the case of the C64 version. Cherry Software were aiming to creating something just as good, if not better, than the Braben/Bell classic.

Future World was to be a fantastic Elite style trading game, with filled vector graphics and presentation to knock the socks off the old classic.

The publicity information on the game was sure enough to get gamer’s excited, but unfortunatly as with a few of Cherry Soft’s game, this one was put under the kybosh, possibly due to poor sales of their previous releases.

A shame…. though fortunately a preview was released, and quite an impressive one at that. Apart from the snazzed up trading screens and fairly impressive space scenes (Which are currently empty from any 3D ships), actual space fighting occurs over a Combat style arena, with two ships battling it out. A nice idea, though possibly a 3D battle encounter would have been better.

So, all the trimmings and current building blocks of a great space trading game, but no full game. Just how far the developers got with this game is something GTW is hoping to find out. It is quite likely that the game progressed further after its preview was launched. Credits are available to us, so now research can be made. Rumour has it that Cherry Soft had some connection to F4CG, can anyone confirm or deny this?

A fantastic little preview, an idea lost in space…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/future-world/
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Fuzzball  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Fuzzball
1992 System 3

Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5
Coding: Miles Barry
Graphics: Robin Levy, Jed Adams
Sound: Jeroen Tel

Fuzzball is another classic GTW case. A great platform game, in which a two level preview (Featuring level one and level 16) was released to the readers of Commodore Format on issue 24. Unfortunately it was to be the Amiga version that was only to see the light of day.

Fuzzball had you controlling a blue fuzzball which had to kill all of the other fuzzballs in the 50 big levels for you to be turned back into a human. The game looks great, and plays the same with effective squiging sfx and music by Jeroen Tel..

Its very addictive and would have been something to keep gamers happy. Unfortunately it was never to be.

The game was completed but System 3 pulled out of the C64 market at the same time it was completed. They decided not to take a final risk by releasing Fuzzball.

Another version of events originally depicted that Miles Barry (the programmer) was not paid for his efforts and was dragged onto coding the SNES version of “Putty Squad” as compensation for lost wages. This has been clarified as being incorrect and what happened infact was that Miles had to go back to Prism to write Football Manager 3 and was threatened with legal action if he didn’t. It is possible that this may have just been before the game’s completion and pushed System 3′s decision to let the game go.

According to sources, Miles doesn’t have a complete version of the game, as it was on the PDS system at System 3. Either this has been possibly wiped or hoarded (though rumours are that System 3 have kept everything). Possibilities of a full version in existence still, is quite remote, but not unproven. There were some developments where there was a final hope of the game being uncovered, with a system being found… but it was found not to have anything of Fuzzball, and to this day its believed that it only ever remained on System 3′s PC based SNASM system.

We found out in recent times that actually Jed Adams took over the graphical development of the game in the later stages. It started out as a title that both Miles Barry and Robin Levy worked on. When Robin lost interest in the project, Miles brought Jed in to continue the work. Jed redid all of the graphics, all of which you can find in the CF preview (Robin’s graphics were not used as far as we know). Jed completed all his graphic work on the game, but its not 100% known if the game was fully finished by Miles before it was scrapped. It’s believed that there is no reason to say otherwise.

We heard rumours that Jeroen Tel had composed more music for the game than what was in the preview.  After getting in touch in late 2012, Jeroen confirmed that he did and passed GTW64 on the source files to Level 2, Title and High Score tunes he had composed and which were not used!   You can now hear these for yourself for the very first time!  And they are pretty neat too!  (Thanks to Mikael Backlund for helping compile them!)

But what of the full game itself?… Well, the only chance it seems of ever getting hold of a full version will be to confront and ask Mark Cale himself, but will he allow a release?…

Well, we may not need to rely on this – as Mikael asked GTW64 to hold back on the music initially as they wanted to surprise you a little more with a little more than just extra tunes found.

Literally at the death, Mikael Backlund caught wind that we had located the tunes, asked us to hold back as there was opportunity to share something a little bigger with you.  Mikael and his team have spent the last 10 years taking the Fuzzball preview apart and reconstructing it.  They have reconstructed and built a new unseen Level 2 with Jeroen’s unreleased level 2 music in place!

It is a huge surprise, and it is a significant development – as it shows the potential that this game could some day be actually finished! Jeroen’s musical gift has helped also establish how the music/sfx plugged into the game properly.   We really hope that eventually we see more!  Watch this space!

Contributions: Jazzcat, Jed Adams, Mikael Backlund, Jason Kelk, Mort, Loflo, Jeroen Tel

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Robin Levy speaks about work on Fuzzball...

"Fuzzball was another odd one... Miles Barry was the coder on this for a while and I remember making a start on the graphics, however my heart wasn't really in it so Jed was called in and redid my graphics as well as finishing the rest of the game's visuals, a duty I was all too happy to relinquish and he did a top job.

After this I recall things got a little messy, Miles disappeared for a couple of weeks so Jed took over the coding. The whole bit around the game not being released because of the fading 64 market sounds about right."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/fuzzball/
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Game X  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Gameboy Tetris V3  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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' Gameboy Tetris V3 ' by Wiebo De Wit. Yes indeed, the original Gameboy classic with it's block switching and turning fun is now available to enjoy as an early scene release found on Github by Laxity untouched for more than 5 months. But that's not all, as Laxity have added a Joystick option and a restart! So make a beer, grab a Pizza and reach that high score!

In regards to what is playable in this preview, you can move the blocks and make lines just like the original Gameboy version, but so far there is no sound nor is there any music in our play through, apart from the awesome cracktro.


http://www.indieretronews.com/2015/11/gameboy-tetris-v2-preview-original.html
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Garfield  v1  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1987 The Edge
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Mat Sneap
Graphics: Mat Sneap
Sound: Unknown

A short entry for a V1 edition of a released game that many of us enjoyed growing up.

Tucked away on a work disk of Mat Sneap, was this early build of Garfield that shows some of the game with multi-directional scrolling compared to the final game.

It’s clearly still some way off from being the complete game we all know, but its an interesting curiosity prototype none-the-less to show you. Why was the multi-scrolling dropped for instance?

In addition to the preview, is the screen designer tool that was being used to construct all of the game’s map.

Contributions: Cory Kin


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/garfield-v1/
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Gem Quest  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1990 Kinsoft
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Cory Kin
Graphics: Cory Kin, Toby Eglesfield
Sound: Rob Hubbard, Matt Gray

Gem Quest was a game from Hex (aka Cory) of Pixel Developments – A demo group from UK’s very own Compunet. Some of their demos got featured in ZZap!64 magazine (e.g. Hunter Killer). Unfortunately, due to further studies, the game was never finished.

The game can be best described as a mixture of Parallax, Z, Survivor – with some nice graphics throughout with 8-directional scrolling.  The idea was to collect gems from the levels to then open up an exit door to escape to the next level.  Various ships, crossbones would cause you to loose energy/shield power.

The game was released in a preview state that is still playable, where there are aliens that you can shoot.  This is believed to be the last known version that was developed.

According to Cory, the game was at a 55% complete status and just needed a few months to finish off, as well as some final graphics from his colleague Toby Eglesfield.  The preview contains graphics developed by Cory himself.

Overall, the preview is very promising indeed, and no doubt one of the budget labels would have snapped the game up had it been finished.  Additionally, the game may have had music and fx by Matt Gray had things got further.

Luckily we have what remains here, so unless Cory finds any more of this game – then it will be a case closed on this one!  Check out the download and enjoy!

Contributions: Cory Kin

---

Cory Kin speaks about work on Gem Quest:

“It is an 8 way map scroll shoot/collect ‘em-up type of game. It has nice graphics that stands out even today to some degree.  If you would like to have the game preview as a T64 or D64 image, I can provide.

The game preview from CSdb is the only and last known version that I had transferred from C64 floppy disk. There is no other version out there.

The game was at 55% and needed a few months to finish and polish it off (e.g. the player’s chrome space ship instead of being just a white ball).

It was intended to have music from Matt Gray and some final graphics from Tob as well as we were good friends but due to my studies, I had to leave the C64 scene behind.  The game was targeted for a budget label publisher at the time (e.g. Firebird/Silverbird, Players, Mastertronic).

Gem Quest was supposed to be a mixture of an eight way scroller shoot-em-up and collect-em-up type of game. It was inspired by popular games that I liked to play at the time such as Parallax, Z, Boulder Dash, Zone Ranger, and Survivor. The player’s shield was supposed to play a major part in the game play so that the player had freedom to fly all over the level to find and collect the strategically placed gems. By hovering on the glowing ‘S’ character, you would recharge your shield. Collision with the skull and high obstacles with shadow, and warning blinker lights would cause you to loose shield.

Once all the gems had been collected, an exit door would appear to teleport you to the next level. I wish I had finished the game back in 1990, it was intended to have music and sound fx by Matt Gray, and at least some graphics and level design contributions from Toby but it was never to be, and here it is today as an unfinished project in the familiar tones of too little too late.”


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/gem-quest/
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Giana Sisters 30th  (preview)
Original title: Giana-Sisters 30th Anniversary Preview
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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We've certainly heard a lot about that famous platformer the Great Giana Sisters from 1987, especially as it came back to the Amiga as a Giana Special Edition by Reimagine Games and then of course the Great Giana-Sisters Construction-Set, whereby you can create your own levels. But this latest release as Giana-Sisters 30th Anniversary Preview on the C64 by The-Seven-A-Three, is something of a special breed and one you might be interested in checking out!

Now as we said before many of you already know of this game especially Amiga and C64 owners as this game has huge similarities to Super Mario and as such way back in the 80's also had an alleged lawsuit case against them from Nintendo. In celebration of this rather famous or infamous game, The-Seven-A-Three has released their own version as a 30th anniversary preview with 8 new stages + 1 bonus stage and even a secret stage!

But if you don't care about just stages you'll be pleased to know the team behind this unofficial anniversary have also gone on to say the game does have a more developed engine, with features including swimming, lifting blocks, falling stones and further improvements! Which is a far cry to the construction set they released some time ago. Just be aware if you do want to try this version out it is a preview, and if you can wait, the full version will have more than 30+ stages, secret stages and much more!


http://www.indieretronews.com/2016/12/frogger-arcade-for-c64-hokuto-force.html
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Girlguard  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1989 Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Marcus Wagner
Graphics: Heiko Schlabs, Marcus Wagner
Sound: Andreas Bauerfeind

Thanks to Jazzcat for the heads up about this game, which was shown recently on the developer’s website.

The game was a RPG title, with a large world with 16 different countries, 32 dungeons, four different breeds, elaborate, personal character creation, 20 pieces of music, more than 100 items and seemingly endless number of adventures.  Well, as Marcus explains – this was only on paper and was too much to get sorted.

Graphics, music were all done – but the code was not!  However, Marcus very kindly shared the work so far on his website, and which you can download from here.

We assume that the game was being touted to publishers at the time, but we’re not sure who exactly.   We hope to find out more soon from the developer himself.

Contributions: Jazzcat


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/girl-guard/
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Give That Dog A Bone  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Golden Pyramids II  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Golden Pyramids 2
1991 Twilight

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Harold Klink
Graphics: Martijn Althuizen
Sound: Harold Klink

Fans of games such as Lode Runner may have been familiar with a particular title released by Magic Disk, called "Golden Pyramids" – created by Harold Klink and Martijn Althuizen back in 1990/91. This was their first proper commercial release (although Dying High – their other game – just missed out from a Zzap 64 covermount), and it did quite well and had a good reception.

It was almost by default that a sequel would start to emerge, though it wasn’t really common knowledge to anyone in the gaming world. This was done pretty much underwraps by the developers in the hope that they would sell the game like the first.

Golden Pyramids 2 was to feature much of the first game, but with new levels and various visual and playability enhancements throughout. It was also considered briefly about including a level editor with the game, which would have been quite nice.

Sadly interest with the game’s development was lost and it fell by the way-side as Harold and Martijn moved away from the C64. Both guys had however done a fair amount of work, including a few levels and some of the playability. Martijn did also a great deal of graphical work for introductions and end sequences.

All of this was left to gather dust, until in 2006, GTW got in touch with developers regarding Dying High. This also led to other titles which never saw the light of day, including all the disks in relation to the Golden Pyramids 2 project. With kind permission from Harold and Martijn, as well as a complete collection of what we found on the work disks – we also include the source disks incase anyone wants to examine and maybe do something with the code.

So GTW is proud to present another game once lost and now found. A big thanks to Skeletor for piecing together the remains for GTW. Enjoy and check out what could have been a nifty sequel.

One tomb that has been exhumed and opened…

Contributions: Harold Klink, Martijn Althuizen, Jazzcat, Skeletor


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/golden-pyramids-2/
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Graham Gooch World C Cricket (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1991 Audiogenic
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Kevin Franklin
Graphics: David Peacock
Sound: N/A
Also known as: Graham Gooch All Star Cricket

A bit of a question mark over this title. Although eventually released by Audiogenic in about 1992, it wasn’t the same game at all which was first previewed in Zzap Issue #77. If you check the graphics, you’ll see there is a noticable difference to the game which was infact released. The game released was a slightly rehashed version of a cricket game by Audiogenic in the 80’s.

So what happened to this other version?…. Did Audiogenic decide the leave the C64, scrap the current game and cut their losses by rehashing the old game?

As you can see from the screenshots, the version which was reviewed in Commodore Format back for issue 12. The game is considerably different. So why review a full game and not have it released?   What further makes it seem very odd is that Your Commodore issue 84 also reviewed the game.  Surely two magazines couldn’t have reviewed an unfinished game?

We got in touch with Audiogenic, who are amazingly still going strong today. It has been found that indeed there was another Cricket game in development which was cancelled because the team weren’t apparently making progress. As a quick solution, the old game was recoded slightly and released at the end to make back some money.  Was that really it?

Our biggest lead was that some ex-Tynesoft guys were behind the unreleased version we have shots of here. So looking at the credits of previous Tynesoft games, we have a few names to check out and try and find out more. Audiogenic did not recall any names sadly, and do not have any of the code from this better looking game. Recently thanks to Andrew Fisher, we can now confirm that the developer was none other than Kevin Franklin of Zybex fame. Graphics were done by David Peacock, who did some graphics for other Tynesoft games.   No music was thought to have been composed – Adam Gilmore had no involvement.

David recalled that he went to Audiogenic after Tynesoft closed.  He remembers tracing the bowling animation from a recorded cricket game on VHS using a sheet of paper taped over the screen.  Graphics were done on DPaint on the Amiga nad then ported down.  Sadly David was believed to no longer have anything of his work on the game.  David also had no idea that the game wasn’t actually released.

Kevin’s knowledge of what happened to the game after it was stopped being worked on is very much non-existent. When he stopped working for Audiogenic around April 1991, the game was pretty much finished and the in-game screenshots from the CF review look very similar to what Kevin remembers about the game.

We have had confirmed that this is another case of magazines reviewing incomplete games. Audiogenic have told GTW that the game was never finished, so Commodore Format have reviewed an incomplete game in this case. But from Kevin’s evidence, we must give the benefit of the doubt that they reviewed a pretty much complete game … not a too early preview. Maybe Audiogenic sent it over saying it was done.  Zzap previewed the game in their news section (see scans) and they state that they are playing an early version – which looks very close to the game that CF reviewed.

Overall it looked bleak for the game – with Kevin and David confirming they had nothing of the game.  At best, David suggested he may still have the graphical assets to the game that he produced.  Sure enough in 2014, David found some disks and passed them onto GTW64 for evaluation.   All graphic disks were sadly PC formatted, so work continues on preserving them (which should be of interest across all formats).

However … there was one single C64 formatted disk which was labelled with 64 Cricket (Keep), which happened to be possibly the last remaining copy of the game!   A frozen copy probably produced by Kevin to show David how the game was shaping up with his graphics in place.   David didn’t even know that he had this, so it has been a surprise turn up!

Interestingly the main title screen has a different title of Graham Gooch All Star Cricket, which we’ve added as a sub title.  Was the name later changed?  It seems so… possibly this could be a build before Audiogenic decided to tie the game into the World Cup.   So missing still is a slightly later version with a different title, but the rest of the game seems to be in place.

We are not 100% sure how incomplete the title is,  but it does look very very close!   No sound though, so we are keeping the entry as a preview.   In the meantime, there is potential for a Spectrum, Amstrad set of graphics to also be saved in the near future.  The complete and lost title screen could also well be on a 5.25″ PC formatted disk that we have with the C64 graphics on, so watch this space!

For now… for the first time in 23 years since we saw those fuzzy screenshots,  here it is!

Contributions: Chris, Peter Carver, Kevin Franklin, David Peacock, Iain Black, Pugsy and Jazzcat

---

David Peacock recalls work on the game:

“After Tynesoft closed a handful of staff started working for Audiogenic. While Audiogenic found an office in Newcastle I was temporarily working in a colleague’s house. I remember tracing the bowling animation from a recorded cricket game on VHS using a sheet of paper taped over the TV screen.

I don’t know of any business decisions as to why it wasn’t released. In fact I had no idea the 64 version wasn’t released.

I don’t have any backups of old work. I used DPaint on the Amiga for the graphics. My only Amiga backup (on 60 disks) has a few disks missing which makes the whole thing useless and there is no guarantee it contains my Audiogenic work. It would be great to see that work again.”


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/graham-gooch-world-class-cricket/
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Grubz (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Worms!
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Gyrofalcon  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Electric Boys Entertainment software were certainly a busy bunch of lads, and this was another title which was being penned for a C64 commercial release by the C64 hero’s of its commercial death.

As with Defensive, the preview only shows a previously scrapped game which never got completed, and EBES were to do up the game considerably for the C64 and add support for people with Ram Link’s.

Added features were believed to be video footage and more colourful graphics and intense gameplay. Possibly in the same vein as Metal Dust now promises many hungry C64 gamers.

No work actually got started, so all that remains is quite a pleasent sideways shoot em up, with some nice graphics and music.

The reason for it being scrapped?… simply no support for EBES and their previous releases, doomed anything else that they had planned for the C64.

TMR/Cosine highlighted that there was a preview out there which has been cracked and claimed to be a 106% version, because they debugged it and added a titles page, so its actually halfway to being a game. But where is this preview?… Well, thanks to Asphodel, here it is:

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=80372

Worth checking this preview out just for the cool bubble like bullets..

Another promising EBES game on the scrapheap…

Contributions: TMR/Cosine, Asphodel


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/gyrofalcon/
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H.E.R.O. II  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Sometime back we mentioned the work in progress enhancement of the original C64 game of H.E.R.O, which was first released way back in the 1980's for the Atari 800/2600, ColecoVision, C64, C128, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Now titled as ' H.E.R.O II ', with updates by the same developer Retrofan who is behind the upcoming Bombjack remaster. Has felt that the original was lacking in the graphics department as it looked and played hardly any better than the Atari 2600 version. As such also thanks to maltes they have decided to make it look so much better as an overhaul, that is now previewed in this early version released by Excess.

In this classic game you play as ' Roderrick Hero ' and must search the cave system for the miners of Mount Leone, who have been trapped deep below after a recent volcanic situation that has occurred. As for this remaster, graphically it's far superior to the original game even at this early stage, it's just a shame from my experience you can only visit the one screen. But at least you can take in how good the graphics now look including the character animation.


http://www.indieretronews.com/2017/05/hero-ii-original-c64-action-classic.html
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Harrier Strike  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1990 Players Software
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Duncan Kershaw
Graphics: Arless Kershaw
Sound: System 6581, Gerard Gourley
Also known as: Stella

Our next title in the archives sounds like it should be some kind of jet fighter game, but in fact Harrier Strike was a space shooter which was being written by Duncan Kershaw shortly after Steel Eagle.  Originally it was to be called Stella.

Oddly too – but the game is tied to a story about battling against the “Argies” yet again.  It seems a slightly confused game.

The game was being written for Players, but sadly at this time people were starting to get bored of space shooters and as a result it was decided not to release the game.

It’s an intriguing title which is mostly a rehash of the engine used for Steel Eagle and various others at that time by Duncan.  But it is a nice finding, and seems to be pretty much complete apart from the lack of tunes/sfx by Gerard Gourley and System 6581 (we may find these at a later date).  There are shops which you can go into to upgrade weapons and carry on blasting a wide array of enemies.

It’s a shame that no-one picked up the game to release, or even a magazine cover could feature the game – as it has meant rotting away on a disk for about 23 years.  Until now that is – we are very proud to present the game for the first time thanks to Duncan going through his work disks.

You can now see for yourself what could have been yet another Players title by Reflective Designs.

Contributions: Duncan Kershaw


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/harrier-strike-2/
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Hawk  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A strange little preview by Thomas Miegel, involving somekind of space craft doing duties over various landscapes.

HAWK is based on INTENSITY by Andrew Braybrook – the aim is to rescue people. You control one vehicle, press fire to land somewhere and then the other vehicle moves to that point – but don’t collide with it!

The preview comes with a few levels, including a screenshot of a later level which is unplayable.

There is a fair amount actually in the preview, to indicate that not too much work was needed to finish the game off. The levels are however not all linked together, and you will have to keep reloading to see each level.

Graphically quite good, with graphics typical of a late 80′s C64 game, and some good sonics. A little rough around the edges, but otherwise a promising looking preview.

The exact release details are currently non-existant, though credit names will hopefully lead to some more information being dug up on this game. Possibly to find a later version, or even a completed version. Can you help?

Nice things going on here…


Contributions: Andrew Fisher




http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/hawk/
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Hawkeye 2  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Hawkeye 2
1989 Thalamus

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Mario van Zeist
Graphics: Thomas Heinrich and Michael Detert
Sound: Thomas Detert and Markus Schneider

Hawkeye 2 was something that original coder Mario van Zeist wanted to realise, with better graphics, sound and more added twists to the gameplay.

It was going to be released under the Thalamus label, but was never completed due to some disagreement, which is not yet known. Hopefully more talks with Mario will clear this up.

The game was never fully completed unfortunately. Music over the years was preserved and can be found in HVSC, written by Markus Schneider. We believe more tunes may exist somewhere.

Thomas Heinrich came forward recently and confirmed that he and Michael Detert did graphics. Thomas Detert was also doing the music with Markus.

After cancellation of the game, graphics were used in various titles such as Greystorm, Genloc and Darksword by X-ample Architectures.

However in 2010, Onslaught managed to recover a large amount of remains of Hawkeye 2 from the developers, mostly in the shape of the graphics done for the game. But most shockingly with news of the sequel to be completed (More on this in a bit), with the teaser preview came an original preview done from 1989 of the original game and graphics. Think Hawkeye mixed with Deadlock, and you get Hawkeye 2, and it is a very promising demo with some superb graphics and paralax scrolling.

As well as being left and right based, there are lifts in the game and small intersections. The game looked to be a large step forward in comparison to the first game. But this was all there ever was. We are proud to add a glimpse though after many years of hunting for it!

But the best news has to be regarding Onslaught looking to produce a proper brand new Hawkeye 2 game, based on the graphics with a load of improvements and extras. The game is being written from scratch and features around 25 lines of parallax scrolling with plenty of CPU cycles left free. Check the preview out from here, but it looks superb! The game in total will have around 12 levels.

Jazzcat also had this to say about the new development:

"We have been working on it for some time, (I am project manager and have been overseeing level design and storyboard). The game will feature 25-charline full colour parallax in both NTSC and PAL, obviously with some (very flexible) restrictions. It will hopefully feature 8-directional shooting, 32 sprites (might be scaled back to 24), delta sprite animation compression for long animation sequences of small pieces (think discharged bullets, muzzle flashes, reloading, etc), separate hair animation engine, based on jumping, changing direction, and wind sources. Of course there will be much more! 

 While we did start from the original Hawkeye 2 development disks from the X-Ample guys, H2-new features a 100% rewrite, using far less memory and raster time to allow the game to go beyond just a simple shoot and collect. 

 We’re all in full acknowledgment that good graphics do not cover bad gameplay; the gameplay has just as much design going behind it as the technical feature set. A website will arrive soon with further detail!"

So overall, Haweye 2 never quite managed to grace our screens back in 1989 like we had all hoped, but it does now look like we could finally be seeing the game in some shape/form, and we have the original 1989 concepts as an added bonus!

A stunning sequel promised, unfortunately never delivered…

Contributions: Jazzcat, Crisp, Thomas Heinrich


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/hawkeye-2/
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Hawkeye 2 (Teaser)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Hawkeye 2
1989 Thalamus

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Mario van Zeist
Graphics: Thomas Heinrich and Michael Detert
Sound: Thomas Detert and Markus Schneider

Hawkeye 2 was something that original coder Mario van Zeist wanted to realise, with better graphics, sound and more added twists to the gameplay.

It was going to be released under the Thalamus label, but was never completed due to some disagreement, which is not yet known. Hopefully more talks with Mario will clear this up.

The game was never fully completed unfortunately. Music over the years was preserved and can be found in HVSC, written by Markus Schneider. We believe more tunes may exist somewhere.

Thomas Heinrich came forward recently and confirmed that he and Michael Detert did graphics. Thomas Detert was also doing the music with Markus.

After cancellation of the game, graphics were used in various titles such as Greystorm, Genloc and Darksword by X-ample Architectures.

However in 2010, Onslaught managed to recover a large amount of remains of Hawkeye 2 from the developers, mostly in the shape of the graphics done for the game. But most shockingly with news of the sequel to be completed (More on this in a bit), with the teaser preview came an original preview done from 1989 of the original game and graphics. Think Hawkeye mixed with Deadlock, and you get Hawkeye 2, and it is a very promising demo with some superb graphics and paralax scrolling.

As well as being left and right based, there are lifts in the game and small intersections. The game looked to be a large step forward in comparison to the first game. But this was all there ever was. We are proud to add a glimpse though after many years of hunting for it!

But the best news has to be regarding Onslaught looking to produce a proper brand new Hawkeye 2 game, based on the graphics with a load of improvements and extras. The game is being written from scratch and features around 25 lines of parallax scrolling with plenty of CPU cycles left free. Check the preview out from here, but it looks superb! The game in total will have around 12 levels.

Jazzcat also had this to say about the new development:

"We have been working on it for some time, (I am project manager and have been overseeing level design and storyboard). The game will feature 25-charline full colour parallax in both NTSC and PAL, obviously with some (very flexible) restrictions. It will hopefully feature 8-directional shooting, 32 sprites (might be scaled back to 24), delta sprite animation compression for long animation sequences of small pieces (think discharged bullets, muzzle flashes, reloading, etc), separate hair animation engine, based on jumping, changing direction, and wind sources. Of course there will be much more! 

 While we did start from the original Hawkeye 2 development disks from the X-Ample guys, H2-new features a 100% rewrite, using far less memory and raster time to allow the game to go beyond just a simple shoot and collect. 

 We’re all in full acknowledgment that good graphics do not cover bad gameplay; the gameplay has just as much design going behind it as the technical feature set. A website will arrive soon with further detail!"

So overall, Haweye 2 never quite managed to grace our screens back in 1989 like we had all hoped, but it does now look like we could finally be seeing the game in some shape/form, and we have the original 1989 concepts as an added bonus!

A stunning sequel promised, unfortunately never delivered…

Contributions: Jazzcat, Crisp, Thomas Heinrich


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/hawkeye-2/
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Heartlight 64 (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A game that's very similar to Boulder Dash - the basic idea of collecting things while avoiding being crushed is the same. The protagonist of the game is a dwarf named Mosiek, who decided to marry Rachel. A necessary condition, however, is showing the cunning and skill. He goes to a magical world in order to collect all the hearts. Assisting in completing the task are bombs and balloons, disturb stones and walls. In each level player must collect all the hearts, in order to open a door-portal to the next stage.
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Heli Attack  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Heng  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Heng was to be a sort of Civilization-based game on the C64, which was developed from around 2009 time.

The idea was for the game to be a real-time strategy with 2 players (or player vs AI), where you have to get knights to build cannons/ships.

Development got to a fairly advanced stage, which you can see from the final remains here for downloading. It is pretty impressive.

So what happened to the game? Enthusi sadly lost interest in developing the game, and so it was resigned to the scrapheap. More details of the game can be read in Creators Speaks.

What you see here is all that remains of the game, so it is an open and shut case!

Contributions: Enthusi, Jazzcat

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Enthusi talks about work on Heng:

"Heng is my reply to an idea of Civilization on the C64 from early 2009 (at least thats when I last worked on it).  I wanted to turn this into a real-time strategy game with 2 players or player vs AI. You'd need knights to build cannons and/or ships. You'd require cannons to attack castles etc. I still have it all designed in my head :)

Again, I'd rather rewrite it from scratch rather than putting in all that extra work that proper game design requires.  The engine uses tiled Hires bitmap gfx. 3x3 'chars' per big tile + one multiplexed overlay hires sprite per tile (which doesnt cover 3 of the 24 rows).

So basically 2 free colors per cell + 1 free color per tile.  Its featuring 2 zoom modes, standard mode with 7x7 tiles(24x24 pixel) and a zoom with 21x21 tiles (8x8 pixel each)

A reasonable size for a complete MAP will be 96x40. (considering sprite layer and memory) In Zoom2 there will be no Sprite overlay! Instead units will occupy a whole 8x8 area.  Probably one MAIN color (green=land, blue=water, maybe grey=mountain) and one UNIT-color. I.e. a black knight on grass or a yellow ship on the sea. After all this is the OVERview mode.

In the mini map only single color HiRes pixels will indicate units (EOR blinking)
 MAYBE with switches: own units, units player 1, 2, 3.... since colors cant be used to distinguish players...  The text-window is a proportional font plotter.

Maybe the coolest feature is the map-generator. In two iterative steps the 2-col bitmap in the lower right is auto-converted into the larger game map with a smooth-coastline-renderer. Consider the size of the executable, less than 6 KB.

I think this could have been a fun game. Hopefully, I will pick up something like that one day. All gfx here are mere place holders by me."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/heng/
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Henry  (Preview v2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Henry
1993 Starlight

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Adam Bulka (?), Michael Hendriks (?)
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Oliver Klee

A wonderful little preview, involving a well-drawn character called ‘Henry’.

It is a little frustrating to play this ‘Fred’s back’ style game, with some hard jumps and obstacles to avoid, but it looks quite polished with some neat graphics and sound. The preview I think only features 1 level, and quite a big one at that, though I can’t progress too far without dying.

Just why this was never completed is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t really lack too much apart from a bit of originality, and is better than the hordes of puzzlers which swamped the C64 scene at the time of this game being worked on.

It’s likely that this game was planned as a game to be sold by a mail-order C64 company, typical of many games after shops stopped stocking C64 games. Quite possibly early failures of other C64 games selling this way, convinced the programmers to hault all work on this game.

Recently contributor ‘Compounded’ found that the preview we have is incomplete. The text before the game starts indicates that there are two levels in the preview (1.2 and 1.4) , but after entering the door at the end of the first level, the screen goes blank while the drive attempts to read from the disk to get level 1.4. However, upon searching for a complete working version (Which sadly he could not find) he did find another version with a different level (1.1) which can now be found within the download link above. Thanks Compounded!

It is not known exactly what WAS planned for this game, though we now have some credits to look up. The team was the same as that behind Fly Harder, so was the game planned for release by Starlight?

A nice game, unfortunatly shown the door for some reason…

Contributions: Compounded


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/henry/
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History of the World  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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History Of The World
1992 Alter

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Niels Brouwers
Graphics: Marc Hermans
Sound: Unknown

Yet another game from the creators of Lemmings on the C64, Alter Developments, and this time a title which was to be their icing on the cake. A mixture of all the best elements of all the best C64 games out there.

A little big a statement you say, but this is what Alter Developments wanted to create. A mixture of Smash TV, Rubicon, Turrican, Myth and many others to create a game unlike any other.

The dreams were all well and good, and Zeppelin showed interest (but only would fully when Alter had fully converted the failed Championship Run conversion)… but sadly as with many a GTW… this one was never meant to be.

Once things hadn’t worked out with Championship Run, work came back to History Of The World, and it was decided that the C64 was a dying platform… so efforts were concentrated on the Amiga instead…. and so the game was shelved.

Niels Brouwers, the coder of the game, has kindly provided us with an exclusive set of previews of the game. These have never been seen before until now, and nothing was ever really mentioned about the game until Niels suddenly dug it out for GTW.

At the moment the remains show 4 crucial elements which make up some very bare bones for the game. The first most complete part is a sideways scrolling test demo with the main character fighting against very little… with some really nice backgrounds.

The second part features a full colour bitmap scroller which would have no doubt been used within the playable side on preview seen previous.

Following this is a overhead Alien Breed style character which you can control and shoot bullets around on a black screen. A character test demo is exactly what this is.

Finally there is a test rotation routine for a large sacre coeur, which was to rotate around the main player as an end of level enemy. You have to move it yourself, but it gives an indication of the style of enemies which were planned for this game.

That is it for the time being. Overall, it is a promising looking preview which although isn’t really playable… it looks exciting and it makes you wonder what might have been had some of the other elements been finished more. If Zeppelin released this, they may have had one of their biggest titles in their history… but sadly they didn’t, and so this now resides in the GTW archives.

We may see more soon, who knows… but read what Niels has to say about his game in Creator Speaks….

Case almost closed on this one…

Contributions: Jon Wells

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Niels Brouwers about work on History Of The World...

"This is the 'magnus opus' from the minds of Marc Hermans and myself (aka Alter Development). Our goal here was to make the 'game of games', combining all the cool games that we knew of (turrican, rubicon, smash TV, myth, etc.) into the one and only 'ueber-game'. We did several previews / proof of concepts and that is what is on this disk. We never got to finish the game. Zeppeling Games were kind of interested in such a game, but they wanted us to do a port of ChampionShip Run from the Amiga to C64 first. After that other things came by and before we knew it the C64 era was over and moved to Amiga.

The files on the disk:

Beachy.joy#2-fir
 ----------------
 This was a scroller using the full available palet of colors for the C64, not just a simple character based scroller but one based on bitmap scrolling. Very cool graphics in there as well. The idea was good! Press fire to scroll the image.

History joy#2/AD
 ----------------
 This was our text based scroller, with colors per character and a faster scrolling bottom as well. Use joystick port two to push down first (so the guy hits the ground) and then right to start walking. The skull was just there to show off some baddy, we were quite into skulls as baddies back then :-)

Fromabove joy#2/AD
 ------------------
 In another secion, we would our hero-guy seen from the top running around like in the Smash TV action inferno. You can control this guy with the joy in port 2 and do press fire!!! He had lots of bullets and these weren't sprites so there were bound to be much more when we would have put in the enemies.

sacre coeur 1/2
 ---------------
 Since the game was called History Of The World we thought it would be cool to include a BIG sacre coeur (for enemies then) that would rotate around the hero and attack him from all sides. Marc drew up a rotating sacre coeur and this is the result. Start up and use joystick port:up to rotate the sacre coeur!"


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/history-of-the-world/
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Humanoid  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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198? Creative Technology
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Chris Fitzsimons
Graphics: Andie Woodland
Sound: Matt Gray

Quite an errie little preview this one, feeling in someways similar to Mastertronic’s ‘Scumball’.

A nice mixture of hi-res graphics and multi-colour, brighten up this early preview, where you control a space craft which must navigate its way through the underground caverns.

The preview is quite bugged, and can freeze your C64 up at some points. There are however only 3 screens to see, so not much to look at i’m afraid.

Another preview at the early stages of its development, featuring some promise. It was found that the game was quickly knocked up into a demo to take to a computer show.

The game’s final development was haulted when Chris decided for unknown reasons to call it a day. This as far as it got. However, Chris mentions that Andie wanted it to be a scroller, but because there was a time limit, the flip screen approach was kept..

Music is simply ripped from Driller.

But this is it, nothing else to find or report from… maybe some more comments from Chris and Andie themselves, but that is it for now.

Not a bad little preview… case pretty much closed.

Contributions: Chris Fitzsimons

---

Chris Fitzsimons speaks to GTW about work on Humanoid...

"Another one of those “get it ready before the show”.

For some reason, I never took it any further but the graphics look ok. Andie wanted it to be a scroller but I think due to the time, I just created a flip screen demo."

Chris Fitzsimons.
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Humble Bug  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Humblebug
1993 Visualize

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Jon Wells
Graphics: Jon Wells
Sound: Jon Wells

HumbleBug was being created by non other than Jon Wells around the time when Bee52 came out, and so he decided to scrap it just 2-3 weeks into the game, because it was way too similar.

Jon tells me that he was disappointed as there was going to be much more features in the game compared to Bee52′s..

The game looks very nice, with its nicely animated graphics and cool sounds… though you can see some resembalance, but hardly much at all.

All that remains is a demo and small intro sequence, the game is kinda playable but with no enemies. This game will never be finished. This game is now kindly been allowed release into the GTW archives for you to examine and enjoy and think… What if?….

I’m hoping that someday soon Jon may be able to give a fuller description of his game, and the plans he had for it.. but other than that, nothing more to say about this scrapped game.

Case closed…hopefully more from Jon soon…

Contributions: Jon Wells


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/humblebug/
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Hyper Galactic Warrior  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1987 Ian Moran
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Ian Moran
Graphics: Ian Moran
Sound: N/A

Hyper Galactic Warrior is a title that has been around for some time, possibly first surfacing on Compunet as a preview.

The game is a Uridium clone, of which there were plenty at the time. This suggests the game is dated at around 1986-87. The game was written by a chap called Ian Moran, who produced another Uridium’esq game that never was called Omega Ceti. We believe this was the follow on from that initial preview, where the split screen approach was ditched.

Overall, it isn’t a bad title – but it is very likely that the simularities to Hewson’s classic meant that this one was never going to get a release. Maybe we have it wrong, and Omega Ceti was in response to this by making a game with a slight twist (split screen).

Well, Ian got in touch and confirmed that the game was never more than a scratch about to upload to compunet.  They were also written in a way using the Expert Cartridge which meant the game was not really expandable.   Ian was basically playing and testing things out.  See Creator Speaks for more details.

This therefore draws a conclusion to this title and solves the mystery.  This is as far as the game ever got, and therefore is case closed!

Contributions: Ian Moran, Codetapper

---

Ian Moran talks about his development work on Hyper Galactic Warrior and Omega Ceti:

“I had actually forgotten about Hyper Galactic Warrior, which I still think is a pretty good title. The demo was never more than a scratch about to upload to compunet, which was always a great source of inspiration and community.

I do remember Omega Ceti, which I wanted to use a raster interrupt for split screen scrolling, and I had felt really privileged that Matt Gray had offered up the audio track, which I think is great, but again it was only ever a little demo’ette for fun, I had seen Ceti cracked, even with a trainer, just like an actual ‘proper’ title, rather than games that weren’t.

I’d done a little string of demos that were none interactive, I suppose these were a progression from that, I coded on commodore 64 (actually a C128) for sometime after I had got my Amiga, simply because it was accessible. You’d switch it on, and you could be coding in less time than it takes us to boot a PC today, or an Amiga then.

So why were they games that weren’t?, well, I had a Trilogic Expert cartridge, you know the sort of thing, similar to the more well known ‘Action Replay’, you could freeze, edit and continue code, these would allow you to write machine code a code monitor, writing machine code was as straightforward as writing basic, which was great, but if you wanted to add or change anything significantly you would need to manually relocate blocks of code and change each and every piece of calling code, While there were techniques to mitigate these limitations, doing something more than scratching a demo together would require exponentially more effort.

All my c64 demos were done firstly for play and secondly to take an active part on compunet, part of a community, all of which must have been enough of an incentive to carry on, I moved on to the Amiga, and 25 years later I’m still writing games.

Early Amiga titles were covered by your friends site codetapper…

http://www.codetapper.com/amiga/interviews/ian-moran/

Thanks for asking and for hosting an interesting site”


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/hyper-galactic-warrior/
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IlogicAll  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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2008 Unknown
Status: No Download, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Woodmaster
Graphics: Agod
Sound: Unknown

Ilogical was to be a C64 conversion of a title which has seen release on a variety of platforms, and is a cool Picross clone:

http://computeremuzone.com/ficha.php?id=744&l=en

Sadly the C64 edition was never properly finished.  Initially things were very slow by getting info from the Spectrum developer, as he had a very demanding job.  Eventually the coder did get the info they needed, but there were other problems mixed in that made development halt.

As a result – for the first time, here are the remains of the title in various builds and bitmaps – which it seems a massive shame was never released.  Thanks to Jazzcat for giving the heads up on this game for the archive.

The coder got in touch recently in December 2015, and confirmed that they would like to resume the project some day – but now 5 years has passed, they will have to alter some of the code – due to some routines that need fixing.  Sadly he’s confirmed that the latest version of the game was lost, so some work would need to be re-done.

Watch this space!


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/ilogicall/
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Immensity  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Inca - Lost Treasure of Ank-Po  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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19?? ??
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Richard Bayliss
Graphics: Johan Janssen
Sound: N/a

A strangely named game which was to be a graphical text adventure.

The game was actually meant for Protovision, but Protovision were not interested, so the game was cancelled. Richard Bayliss was to pick up the game and do something, but lost interest it seems and the game was fully cancelled.

A series of graphical screens in the end were all that were created. Richard Bayliss compiled these into a slideshow and released it for people to have a look at.

The graphics are not spectacular, but this was a text adventure and nothing more really.

Not much to say at the moment unless the developers want to say more. Checkout the slideshow to see a small glimpse of this game, or at least the graphics.

Case closed!

Contributions: Marco Das

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/inca/
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International Karate - 4 Player  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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4 player version. In progress..
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Inzane (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Ironclad Bastards  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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2016 Psytronik / RGCD
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Achim Volkers
Graphics: Achim Volkers
Sound: Achim Volkers

Achim Volkers has been a savior for C64 fans in recent years, thanks to production of various superb games such as Vice Squad and Space Trip.

Unfortunately, along the way there are always casualties with various ideas that do not quite go to plan. Ironclad Bastards was one such game, which was intended to be an update to Voivod Attack.

Achim added an asteroid field to the game, but after that point it kept crashing. Trying to fix the bug would take two months, without any success. In the end, Achim decided to ditch the project and move onto other things.

Thanks to Achim, we have been given the preview to add to the archives, so you can take a look at what might have been. A shame it was not to get much further.

Contributions: Jazzcat, Achim Volkers


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/ironclad-bastards/
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Island of Monsters  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Island Of Monsters
1998 Hermit Software

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Mihály Horváth
Graphics: Mihály Horváth
Sound: László Simon

Another game in the same week released by Hermit Software, and just as with their Mortal Kombat 2 conversion, they stun again with Island of monsters.

The game was started by Hungarian crew Hermit Software back in 1998, and unfortunately was never to be finished. However, a good chunk of the game is infact playable where you can fight in a Barbarian 2 style game with awesomely detailed graphics throughout. The main characters in the game especially are very well defined.

In addition to the playable parts, there is a really nice animated introduction sequence which overall gives this preview some real polish compared to some unreleased titles we have in the GTW vaults.

We’re not entirely sure why the game was cancelled, but we are convinced it was done as a labour of love for the machine. There is rumour that the developer sold his C64, and only recently got one back in around 2001, where he was able to dig out some of his unreleased works.

This is a fantastic preview which will impress you very much and is certainly well worth seeing! We hope to learn more about it soon!…

A fantastic preview of a fantastic looking game…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/island-of-monsters/
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Itchtris  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Jagged Sword  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Jailbreak  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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198? Wanderer
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Michael J L
Graphics: Michael J L
Sound: Unknown

Our next game comes in the form of the unfinished Jailbreak by Michael J L(Wanderer), a programmer for the C64 under groups such as Rampar and The Survivors.

The idea as the name suggests was to break out of prison over several stages of varying gameplay. Set in the future, the first part of the game has you running down corridors and shooting guards. The second part has you running to escape in a ship, where guards and helicopters attempt to stop you. The 
final part took place in space, with your ship at the bottom of the screen and a alien ship at the top. You had to shoot pieces out of the barrier until there was enough room to get a shot at the ship.
The final level (the best part according to Michael) is currently unknown about, but sadly the source code was corrupted and lost… So the game preview currently ends abruptly.

It is for this reason that we add Jailbreak into the archives. Had the final level not corrupted, Jailbreak would have been offered to publishers. Instead a cracking group got hold of the game and sent it out everywhere, busting chances of this game ever being finished off and released properly. It is not the best game in the world, but a playable effort from Wanderer, and one which would have been a nice title to play. The preview requires some bug fixes, but you can see the potential in the game.

Apparently according to Michael, there is another version which has improved graphics by someone called "Fred", which we hope to find one day and release to the world. It is unsure if anything can be salvaged from the corrupted source code… it is always possible, and we may explore this route to restoring this 
game to its full glory, for people to enjoy as Michael intended.

Check out the Creator Speaks with Michael to get the full details and story of this game. In the meantime, also check out the download and see a piece of history yet again. We hope to find out more very soon…..

More soon we hope!…

Contributions: Michael J L

---

Michael J L speaks about work on Jailbreak...

"Here's a long lost game that was never finished. Written by myself (Wanderer). I was a programmer for the C64 under groups like Rampar and The Survivors. I live in Canada, this game was released without copyright, via BBS to North America. It was never finished and never really made it anywhere.

As a coder on the C64 I have always been fascinated with how other people's games worked. There were so many games that were entertaining and challenging that you wouldn't want to put down the joystick.

When I tried to write games, they weren't challenging to me because I knew how the code worked and how the enemies would respond. I always wondered if other coders were able to make games that they could play and be challenged. I'm sure whoever wrote Zaxxon was able to sit down and play his own game for hours. This is what I wanted to achieve.

Jailbreak was my attempt to write a real playable game on the C64 that would be a challenge to play, even for the programmer who made it. My intention was to see if some of the smaller software companies might pick it up. Seeing some of the low quality games that had been released and sold, I felt that my best effort would certainly be marketable.

The credits indicate a person named Fred designed the graphics. However I can now say, years later, that he was responsible for the marketable version only. The version that was released actually used character sets that I designed and the sprites were taken from various games and modified. The final version with Fred's improved graphics never did see the light of day.

The premise of the game was that you were breaking out of a jail set in the future. The first part of the game had you running down corridors and shooting guards. You will note that there is graffiti on the wall of the prison. It reads "RFO." This stood for Rage For Order which was an American import group that I was a member of at the time. The second part of the game had you running to your escape ship. Guards and helicopters would attempt to stop you. This part was seemingly playable even for me.

The last part took place in space. Your ship was at the bottom of the screen and an alien ship was at the top of the screen. The ship at the top was the entire length of the screen and moved left and right. A revolving barrier went around the ship. You had to shoot out pieces of the barrier until there was 
enough room to get a shot at the ship. Of course this wasn't easy. The ship would be firing up on you. The most challenging part of this game was trying to convert your missile sprite position into screen coordinates to remove the portion of the ship's barrier that you hit. The top ship was entirely character 
based, not sprite based.

The final level was the best part of the game. Sadly, one day I went to finish that level of the game and the source code was garbled. Every now and again while coding, I'd load up source code only to find that it had been corrupted. I believe this was as a result of numerous "save and replace" operations on 
the disk and not validating the disk afterwards. For this reason the game abruptly ends with a message saying that there is no final level.

If the final level had not been destroyed, the game would have had the graphics revised and shopped to various software shops. I decided to release the game as it was, incomplete, to the public. It was uploaded to all of the major bulletin board systems (BBS's) as you see it.

A group chose to take my game and level pack it. Where the game used to show a black screen and load the next level (which was already packed) it now shows an ugly border flashing and the de-pack text on the screen. I found this to disrupt the game play. There was no need to level pack a game that was packed already. They claimed to have "cracked, trained and level packed" the game. The game was not protected, already cracked and if I'd felt it warranted a trainer I would have included one. By this time though many groups were hungry for releases and even other scene-programmers games were not above being 
re-released.

Another group, whose name eludes me released a one file version of the game which I felt was pretty cool. Jailbreak would have been a nice little game if the last level hadn't corrupted. And as such it remains a game that wasn't."

Michael J L.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/jailbreak/
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Judge Death  (Preview)
Alternative title: Horror City  (Novotrade)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1987 Piranha
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: J Dosa, P Gostola, E Szabo
Graphics: I Henk, SIR
Sound: Unknown

A 3D Op Wolf style blaster featuring 2000 AD’s Barbie lookalike Psi-Judge Anderson gunning down the evil Judge Death’s zombie hordes. Unlike previous games of this genre, Judge Death actually showed your hand clasping the lethal Lawgiver (gun favoured by Mega City One Judges), though aiming and shooting was via the usual crosshairs.

Strange thing about this game is that a company called Novatrade is credited on this (full?) version ready to download. The game seems full enough. Its not a brilliant game, but for its time… it looked good stuff.   But interestingly Ross Sillifant found a screen which doesn’t seem to be in the game, which suggests there could well be more out there!  Can anyone confirm?

Andromedia software were actually behind the game (Based in Hungary). The main problem with the game was that they apparently used Koala Pad to design all the backgrounds, and unfortunately the C64 did not have the power to shift them around effectively. Pirahna were actually quite miffed with the conversion.

SIR was drafted in to make the graphics “Less clean”, and add some graffiti around the place. SIR did do some nice Dark Judges sprites in addition to his work, but these were sadly never used.

Pirahna software sadly went under with their debts, and this game was caught up in it all. A lot of publicity went into this game, and this you can see on the Scans pages.

It’s all a bit of a mess this game, but some nostalgic worth here to see.

Get blasting those zombie scum…

Contributions: Ian Osbourne, Jason Kelk, Mat Allen, Gaz Spence, Ross Sillifant

---

SIR speaks about work on Judge Death…

“As for Judge Death, well the game was developed in Hungary, but I remember the producers in London weren’t very pleased with the game. The original design for the game – done by a guy called Kevin Williams – was pretty good, but they hadn’t done a good job in coding it.

They’d decided to develop it using bitmapped graphics drawn on a Koala pad (like I used for my loading screens). The problem with this was that the c64 just didn’t have the power to move those graphics around smoothly, hence the really jerky scrolling and sluggish controls.

The publisher wasn’t very happy with the game or the graphics, and I was drafted in to help to try to get the game up to an acceptable standard.
I remember visiting the publisher to discuss with them what we could do.

To start with the graphics weren’t very good, and too clean – there was no detail. So I added all the grafitti and background objects you see in the game. I didn’t have much time so i couldn’t do alot. I did do some very nice C64 Dark Judges sprites, but unfortunately they didn’t end up in the game.

The publisher were keen on an ST version, and I did some sample graphics to show how the ST version could progress, but again nothing happened.”

SIR.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/judge-death/
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Jump  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Jupple Dust  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1986 Construction Computer Players
Status: No Download, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Marcus Wagner
Graphics: Andreas Bauerfeind
Sound: Andreas Bauerfeind

Thanks to Jazzcat for the heads up about this game, which was shown recently on the developer’s website.

The idea of the game was to get all of the fruit on the level, but whilst not opening the cage with the monster.  The cage could not be opened though, as it was never finished (and for reasons we do not yet know).  We assume it would have been published by someone like 64’er.

The game had about 20 levels completed, a level editor and two players- but was missing gameplay elements to fully round it off.

The game was fixed up and released by Laxity in late 2016, so go and check it out now from the downloads!

An interesting looking title that never quite made it

Contributions: Jazzcat, Goat/Laxity


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/jupple-dust/
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Katabatia  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Kill All Humans  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Kill all humans was to be a game where you control a lost robot on a human spaceship heading to attack an outer world. The aim was to kill all humans and scientists that cross your path across multiple levels of the ship.

It was being developed by both Enthusi and Ptoing during 2009 time. Development got to a fairly advanced stage, which you can see from the final remains here for downloading. It is pretty impressive, and features a cool character based raycasting effect for showing the map

So what happened to the game? Enthusi and Ptoing suffered from real life getting in the way, and there would be some hefty work and scheduling involved to get the game completed. More details can be found from Enthusi in the Creator Speaks section.

What you see here is all that remains of the game, so it is an open and shut case!

Contributions: Enthusi, Jazzcat

---

Enthusi speaks about work on Kill all Humans:

KAH stands for "Kill all humans". Use joy in port 1 for this one.  An game idea ptoing and me came up with after the first NEH - not even human game. You'd control a lost robot on an human spaceship heading to attack an outer world. You'd run berzerk and had to kill basically all humans/scientists that cross your path. Multiple levels among the ship, each featuring a 100x100 map.

The core of the engine is a raycaster that hides all tiles in shadow that are not within
sight from your robot. This is carried out in charmode. The rendered map is than converted into hires bitmap on the fly replacing all chars with true 2 color hires bitmap tiles.

Automapping included. All gfx as well as the HUD and the test-level-map by ptoing.
You will find some tiles marked 'T'. Those are terminals. The idea was to switch to some cyber-engine then that instead of using the paths inbetween the walls, utilizes the walls (i.e. same levelmap data) for you to travel in cyberspace to i.e. cut the life support in some rooms and have all people suffocate in there. We stopped on this project when real life took over and we realized that it would take some designated work shifts to continue.

We still love the concept and idea. Personally I love the raycaster which in char mode is VERY fast as well. It was a bit tricky to get the corners right.  I'm much less happy with the speed of the resulting hires-bitmap which is what's keeping me from having this high on my list. Another case of required re-write since I learned so much since then.

The story and its design however I still like alot."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/kill-all-humans/
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King's Valley  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Conversion from the well known MSX title; coming soon!..
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Knight'n'Grail 2  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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2011 Mikael Tillander
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Mikael Tillander
Graphics: Mikael Tillander
Sound: Hans Axelsson

The original Knight n Grail was a fantastic title which blew many people away when it turned up. One of my favourite games of recent times with some excellent twists and turns.

When this sequel preview turned up, I of course was very excited – but then Mikael was uploading it as an abandoned project which was apparently started several years ago. It’s a huge shame of course!

The title seems like it would have had a completely different spin compared to the first game, where this time you just control a flying bird shooting through various levels and taking different paths. Sort of like Agony on the Amiga if you want something to compare it to.

The preview has a few levels which you can go through and plenty of enemies to shoot. It’s very playable at this stage and shows a lot of promise. Mikael has very kindly made the source code available, which you can also find a copy here. Maybe Mikael will change his mind and finish the game some day, or someone else will pick things up.

A promising game sadly that may never be!

---

Mikael Tillander talks about his game:

“The follow up to KnG. In a different genre, though.

Got the urge to continue on this. But there are too many problems, like the multiplexor / sprite performance.
Kind of like the idea though, there should be different routes to the final destination. This version have 4 different levels, I think.

So, this is the state it was left at…several years ago.”


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/knight-n-grail-2/
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Knightlore  (Demo-Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Knightlore
1986 Firebird Software

Status: No Download, Findability: 1/5
Coding: N/A
Graphics: N/A
Sound: N/A
Other: Shahid Ahmad (Proposed developer)

We are excited to learn of yet another Ultimate game which was apparently in the works for the Commodore 64.

Following on from the successful conversion of Nightshade, Shahid Ahmad was offered the chance to convert both Knightlore and Alien 8 for Firebird Software.

Unfortunately though, things went sour with Ultimate after Shahid got himself an agent, and the agent tried to contact the Stampers.  The Stampers at this point stopped all contact – something which Shahid has ever since regretted.  A huge shame!

What is not known is if the conversion was offered to anyone else after that point, or if it just faded away due to not being able to find someone else up for the job.  I guess we may learn in time!

What is interesting though is that there are currently 2 unofficial conversions in the works which you can learn more about here:

http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29053&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=knight+lore

At somepoint or another, we will get to see a conversion of the game it seems – which is great news!

Contributions: Vinny Mainolfi


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/knightlore/
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Knightlore  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Knightlore
1986 Firebird Software

Status: No Download, Findability: 1/5
Coding: N/A
Graphics: N/A
Sound: N/A
Other: Shahid Ahmad (Proposed developer)

We are excited to learn of yet another Ultimate game which was apparently in the works for the Commodore 64.

Following on from the successful conversion of Nightshade, Shahid Ahmad was offered the chance to convert both Knightlore and Alien 8 for Firebird Software.

Unfortunately though, things went sour with Ultimate after Shahid got himself an agent, and the agent tried to contact the Stampers.  The Stampers at this point stopped all contact – something which Shahid has ever since regretted.  A huge shame!

What is not known is if the conversion was offered to anyone else after that point, or if it just faded away due to not being able to find someone else up for the job.  I guess we may learn in time!

What is interesting though is that there are currently 2 unofficial conversions in the works which you can learn more about here:

http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29053&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=knight+lore

At somepoint or another, we will get to see a conversion of the game it seems – which is great news!

Contributions: Vinny Mainolfi


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/knightlore/
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Knightshift  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Knuckle Buster V1  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A quick addition showing a rather different looking Knuckle Buster game on the C64 by Mat Sneap.  Luckily in this case the preview has been around for some time.  The thing is that some people have specified that they prefer the preview to the final game. 



http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2013/03/knuckle-buster-early-version/
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Labyrinths  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Labyrinths
1992 Ste Pattulo

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Ste Pattullo
Graphics: Kent Murray
Sound: Jeroen Tel

And we thought that only Platform Mania and Colditz V1 were the titles we were looking for from Ste Pattullo. Well, we were wrong, and Labyrinths was yet another title which never got to see the light of day, sadly due to the dwindling C64 market at the time, where support would have been limited from companies for the game.

Labyrinth’s is a kind of top down/slanted Pacmania clone, where you control a rather “Pac-like” character who munches dots in a maze and avoids various nasties. Actually, add in a bit of Mazemania to Pacmania, and we’ve pretty much summed up Labyrinths, as it also features different floor tiles which have an effect on you and deplete your energy.

The 3D effect is good once you see how its working, though it would have required more work to be more convincing first off.
 The game plays well in this early form, and shows promising signs of what could have been a nice little budget game. It certainly isn’t original, but it seems to be better than most efforts that appeared on budget.

The demo features around 4 levels, and graphics by the creator of Bod Squad. However, I couldn’t reach past the first level, due to some bugs. If you collect all the pills and go to your starting point, the game will crash. Go to the final door to the far right, you can walk in the background. Be careful, as you can get stuck in part of a maze with no exit.

This is essentially all that ever existed of the game before it was cancelled, so there is no search to perform on this one. It is a new previously unseen title which we are very proud to add to the archives thanks to Ste who recently got in touch with GTW about his work.

Go check it out and enjoy another “What if”… Certainly it won’t help you burn the midnight oil away for playing, but it is a nice preview which should interest those who follow those games once lost…

Unless Ste has more to say or uncover on this game, its case closed.

A nice early preview with plenty of promise…

Contributions: Ste Pattullo

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Ste Pattullo speaks about work on Labyrinths...

"Labyrinths was the last game I wrote. It was a bit late for the 64 market as the Amiga had taken over.

The idea of the game was to make your way around the scrolling maze and eat all of the dot things then get back to where you started.

The game is supposed to give an impression of a 3D Maze, some people could see it, others couldn't

I think there are 4 levels in there and the game was far from finished.

The music was pinched from a demo and I think was by Jeroen Tel, the main sprites were by Kent Murray who wrote The Bod Squad and went on to work on the SNES."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/labyrinths/
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Lawless Legends  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Lawless Legends is a new wild western style computer role playing game, that is being developed for the Apple II, Commodore 64, and other more modern platforms.  

While the project is still in its infancy, one can expect all the usual suspects in this western RPG; Cutthroats and thieves, gamblers risking their life savings on a card game, barkeeps pouring drinks to the drunkards, loose women cavorting with the men at the saloons, and the occasional lawman who tries to keep the wild west from turning into complete chaos.

According to the Lawless Legends Github..."The primary goal for this open-source project is to build out game creation tools and hopefully the majority of a usable game engine that can be used in conjunction with the tools to build a playable RPG game. By being open-source, we are saying you are free to build your own games with these tools and distribute those games as you see fit."

Take a ride on the Lawless Legends train, but watch out for unsavory types. This is the wild west. Bring your guns and horses, and don't forget your hat.


http://www.indieretronews.com/2014/05/lawless-legends-new-apple-commodore-64.html
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Lazytech  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Lazytech
199? Unknown

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Chester Kollschen
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Matthias Deutsch

Thanks to Jakob Voos, we are presented with a game which has never been seen before and is exclusive to GTW.

Unfinished and previously unreleased until now. Jakob sent me a 1/2 player game in the mould of Enforcer, Katakis and Blood Money, and it is a great little game. The two player mode looks great aswell.

LazyTech was being coded by the extremely talented Chester Kollschen before even Manfred`s Enforcer was out. So it was quite high-leveled for its age.

The project was scrapped for reasons unknown at the moment, and now all that is left of the game is 2 nice big levels, which when working properly… will hopefully provide some nice gameplay for you C64 users out there!….

The sprites are apparently being reused in a new project according to Jakob.

Great 2 player Katakis clone…

Contributions: Jakob Voos, Stefan Gutsch


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/lazytech/
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Le Fantome Vert  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Legend of Kyril  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1997 Crystal Software
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Markus Pfingstner, Helfried Peyrl
Graphics: Gregor Pridun
Sound: Unknown

A wonderful sounding project was announced to the C64 world when Legend Of Kyril was being planned for release by Crystal Software.

A potentially stunning RPG game in the style of Jonny Reb and other RPG’s was on its way from the ambitious Crystal Software.

After months of progress and publicity, the game never got around to being finished and Crystal Software folded quickly on the C64.

A series of demo’s sneaked their way out, and show exactly what was to be of the game. Not greatly stunning as compared with other games, but impressive anyway.

Featuring some old style hi-res graphics, and some nice multicolour in the main game, the actual’s game’s engine was apparently complete and the game was playable.

Battles could be fought and won, but this is something we may not see for a while yet, unless we find those behind the actual game to find out more.

Recently in 2010, ex-CEO Alex de Vries got in touch with GTW and had the following to say:

"I used to be the CEO of Crystal Software back when it was developing and publishing games for the C64 and Amiga platforms before making the transition to PC only. The Legend of Kyril was actually an Austrian project we signed up as a last effort to see if we could sell decent volume on the C64 if the quality was there for the title. Our involvement was purely in sales and marketing and we were never involved in the creative side of things. I wish I could remember the names of the developers but it’s just too long ago.

Code exists for some but I have moved halfway across the world since those days so I don’t know whether anything survived. I don’t have a copy anymore in any case.

We packed it in after 1996 and cancelled all projects for the C64 in Q1 1997. Titles we did (re-)publish were McRat, The Zinj Complex, Target, It’s Magic, Colorzone, Riddles and Stones and a few others. Not the greatest stuff but it was fun while it lasted."

So it seems lack of support was the reason this one never quite made it.

We then later found more details from various fanzine sources:

From Commodore Bi Monthly advert:

"A great strategy game with some fantasy RPG features. Many digitized sounds and hi-res graphics make this game the best of its kind ever! It will probably be ready by the end of the first quartero f 1997. You can reserve your personal copy from our first production run of 100 copies at anyone of our subsidaries. No price has yet been set but you can cancel your reservation any time you like if it turns out to be too steep."

From Zine 64 – Issue 9:

"This looks to be one of the best games to hit the C64 in a long time…. Supporting all types of CMD devices and REUS, this is the ultimate strategy in which you lead your troops into battle against enemy warlords….. Find magical items, build strongholds, develop new weapons and troop types, the list goes on…. To be honest I can’t wait until ‘Zine 64 reviews this one"

And also this scan was recovered with more details about the game and is worth a read!

A wonderful sounding project was announced to the C64 world when Legend Of Kyril was being planned for release by Crystal Software.

A potentially stunning RPG game in the style of Jonny Reb and other RPG’s was on its way from the ambitious Crystal Software.

After months of progress and publicity, the game never got around to being finished and Crystal Software folded quickly on the C64.

A series of demo’s sneaked their way out, and show exactly what was to be of the game. Not greatly stunning as compared with other games, but impressive anyway.

Featuring some old style hi-res graphics, and some nice multicolour in the main game, the actual’s game’s engine was apparently complete and the game was playable.

Battles could be fought and won, but this is something we may not see for a while yet, unless we find those behind the actual game to find out more.

Recently in 2010, ex-CEO Alex de Vries got in touch with GTW and had the following to say:

"I used to be the CEO of Crystal Software back when it was developing and publishing games for the C64 and Amiga platforms before making the transition to PC only. The Legend of Kyril was actually an Austrian project we signed up as a last effort to see if we could sell decent volume on the C64 if the quality was there for the title. Our involvement was purely in sales and marketing and we were never involved in the creative side of things. I wish I could remember the names of the developers but it’s just too long ago.

Code exists for some but I have moved halfway across the world since those days so I don’t know whether anything survived. I don’t have a copy anymore in any case.

We packed it in after 1996 and cancelled all projects for the C64 in Q1 1997. Titles we did (re-)publish were McRat, The Zinj Complex, Target, It’s Magic, Colorzone, Riddles and Stones and a few others. Not the greatest stuff but it was fun while it lasted."

So it seems lack of support was the reason this one never quite made it.

We then later found more details from various fanzine sources:

From Commodore Bi Monthly advert:

"A great strategy game with some fantasy RPG features. Many digitized sounds and hi-res graphics make this game the best of its kind ever! It will probably be ready by the end of the first quarter of 1997.

You can reserve your personal copy from our first production run of 100 copies at anyone of our subsidaries. No price has yet been set but you can cancel your reservation any time you like if it turns out to be too steep."

From Zine 64 – Issue 9:

"This looks to be one of the best games to hit the C64 in a long time…. Supporting all types of CMD devices and REUS, this is the ultimate strategy in which you lead your troops into battle against enemy warlords…..

Find magical items, build strongholds, develop new weapons and troop types, the list goes on…. To be honest I can’t wait until ‘Zine 64 reviews this one"

And also this scan was recovered with more details about the game and is worth a read!

Recently in 2011, Helfried got in touch with GTW64 who had the following to say about the game:

"I might be able to shed some light into this case as I used to be in contact with the author of the game, Markus Pfingstner. In fact, the first game preview you are already offering for download lists the following game credits at the end:

The very same authors created the game ‘Kampf um Thurn’ which was published by a German disk magazine:
http://gb64.com/game.php?id=4035&d=18&h=0

Legend of Kyril was the successor of that game but supposed to be technically way more advanced comprising VIC magic such as AGSP and UFLI.

My role was to design an IRQ loading system for the game which was supposed to be compatible with various disk drives (1541, 1581, CMD FD, CMD HD). (Btw, the second preview in your download file already contains a very first version of my IRQ loader. An improved version was published later by 64’er magazine.)

I also started looking for a musician but no one was assigned to the task as game development slowed down after some time. If I remember correctly, Markus mentioned in one of our last phone calls that his new girl-friend and his studies of computer science were distracting him from finishing the game…"

So it looks like the developers got distracted with real life, and this game was never finished as a result. More soon we hope!

One still on the battle field…

Contributions: Helfried Peyrl


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/legend-of-kyril/
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Liberation  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Liberation
1993 Profile Entertainment

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Rasmus Wernersson
Graphics: Jesper Solhoj Larsen, Robert Kjettrup
Sound: Jeroen Tel (?)

Liberation was a game similar to Turrican, and was in development for quite some time by Profile Entertainment. Danish based Profile Entertainment are also known under their demo name, Camelot.

The game had a brief mention in the pages of Commodore Format, under the European Invasion article for Denmark. The game was put down that it was in production and coming our way. The game sadly however was never fully completed and no preview was ever released.

To maybe shock you all, GTW proudly presents a first ever look at the impressive looking Turrican clone. This has deliberately been kept under wraps for sometime now, while the game has been pieced together to get something you can look at, and even briefly play.

GTW brings you a rare look at two playable levels, which are in a very early stage. They are not really playable at all, but you can have a wonder around some simple backgrounds to get a feel for how it was shaping up.

Then you also have two graphical slideshows, which really show the intentions of the game. There are some awesome graphics in here, which show a game which had a lot of ambition and would have maybe kicked some serious butt.

To round off, there is a very brief sprite demo to show some of the sprites. And for those who wish to have a mess around, the game’s level editor is also included. Don’t ask me though how to get any levels running!  

Sadly it seems that the game was cancelled as support in the C64 and its games was draining away. A huge shame, and a potential classic lost. We’ll find out the real reason soon straight from the horses mouth in hopefully a “Creator Speaks” page.

There is more to come too… Note the V1 on the preview. There is more planned, so you will have to watch this space. Its possible we could see something slightly more playable, or even more graphics…. maybe even Jeroen Tel’s unreleased music, if Commodore Format’s reports were right that he *did* do the music.

Check out some of the amazing art and get a small glimpse of a potential classic…

An oil painting which sadly didn’t quite get there…

Contributions: Jazzcat, Andrew, Witold Bryndza


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/liberation/
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Liberator  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1989 CDS Software
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Arless Kershaw
Graphics: Arless Kershaw
Sound: Unknown

Liberator was to be part of a two game bundle along with a game called Sarumax (which eventually turned into Elven Warrior and was released by Players Software).

The game itself was a sort of Hunters Moon meets Solar Jetman, and was being developed by Arless Kershaw, who was the brother of Duncan Kershaw.

It was going to be published with Sarumax by CDS software, but the deal fell through as Players had threatened to sue CDS as they felt the games were theirs to sell. Afterwards, no other publisher wanted the game – and so it was never released.

In recent years, Duncan Kershaw has managed to find some of his old titles, and came across an unfinished copy of Liberator. Overall it looks pretty superb – though i’m not entirely sure what you have to do.   The controls are a little difficult to master, and I wonder if they would have been more fined tuned at a later date.

Duncan has stated that the game was actually finished, but he hasn’t been able to find a complete copy. It is possible that his brother may have a copy, so that route will be checked.

But for now, check out a game which has a lot of promise and wonder what might have been. Could we even possibly be playing a full version some time in the future?

Watch this space!

Contributions: Duncan Kershaw


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/liberator-2/
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Linking Leroy in Lego-Land  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Linking Leroy
1991 Devine

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Harlekin, Pontus Berg
Graphics: Ogami
Sound: Rob Hubbard

This game features the adventures of Leroy, a Lego character in a lego based world.

The graphics are very cartoony, and very faithful to lego (No.. not blocky before you say!). Levels are portrayed over a horizontal push scroll landscape.

The game features some early Rob Hubbard music, and plays fairly well, though i’m not sure what you are meant to do exactly.

The preview is in two parts, both with different levels. The game looks fairly near to completion, apart from possibly some other maps.

As you can read from the article taken from Fairlight’s site… this preview was actually being sponsered by Lego in 1991, though this connection collapsed, and so did work on the game. No other company wanted to license a Lego game.

The preview became part of a demo by Fairlight called ironically “Legoland”. But this is a game in its own right which was sadly never finished. They opened up the game to offers of publishing, but the site is out of date, and the game still sits doing nothing.  According to Pontus Berg, you can enter the level editor by a key combination of Ctrl, shift and shift.

This is all that really remains, until we gain contact with the people behind it…

Brings back memories of the fun with Lego as a child!…

Contributions: Jon Mines, Jason Kelk

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Extracted from Fairlight's site, and development status of this game...

Linking Leroy visits SpaceLand!

The story behind the game:

Earth is too small and people have moved to other planets in our solarsystem developping the natural resources there. But the mean Styggos has his own interests in an other solarsystem and want to destroy everything. He has adapted nuclear bombs on all planets. The quest for Leroy is to find all the keys and disarm the bombs before the explode!

But why making a game??

Actually this project has been going on since 1991... FairLight released the first Demo in the Legoland serie, and we were sponsored by Lego for this. Me and Bacchus thought it would be a good idea and lots of fun to create our own game, and why not making a LEGO game. So the first levels of this game was in a LEGO environment. A preview was released in our demo LEGOLAND2 in '92. But our connections to the LEGO company has broken, and no gamecompany was willing to release a game based on the LEGO concept. So we had to redesign the game to be able to release it...

However, our graphic artist in FairLight - Ogami - was too lazy to do this, so the project was put on ice for some time.. (A few years!!). Now I have increased my graphic skills, and I'm painting the graphics on my own. I'm not that skilled in making music, so the gametunes will come from Red Devil!

Tools used... If anyone is interested?
 The tools we have used for the Leory project so far:
 Xmem Assembler 3.x by Tron/FairLight (Ofcourse!!)
 TronMon 2.x by Tron/FairLight.
 Special FLT version of Graphics Editor by Harlekin/FairLight. First version by J.Fox from Firebird.
 KoalaPainter from Koala Industries.
 Action Replay MKV and MKVI from Datel.
 And lots of homebrewed tools for converting graphics and building the levels!


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/linking-leroy/
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Lions of the Universe 2  (Preview)
Original title: Return of the Lions
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Return Of Lions
1996 Cherry Software
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Hannes Sommer
Graphics: Hannes Sommer
Sound: Karl Sommer

Another potential stunner from the hands of the late C64 era legends, Cosmos Designs.

This time with a sequel to one of their most classic and well remembered C64 titles, "Lions Of The Universe". This game was to take off where the last game left, with more heavy blasting action, bigger and better enemy attackwaves and larger maps.

The preview gives an indication of a few of these things, and is quite large in itself. The game’s big critisism would be that it doesn’t seem to move on too much away from it’s prequel, being very much the same game with different maps. However, the game is still a joy to play, and the preview but only increases anticipation for a sequel.

Sadly, the sequel was never to be. Planned for release on the Cherry Software label, Cosmos Designs seemed to have left the C64 scene due to poor sales of their games, and realised that they had to leave for pastures new. This meant that 3 of their games were left, including Lions 2.

Hannes Sommer recently told GTW that the game was indeed cancelled because the C64 was dying and there was no profit to be made. The game was very complex to build, especially with the enemy patterns and constant testing, so the effort would have been too much for little reward. Hannes moved onto other projects on the Apple platform.

It is not known if Cosmos Designs still have anything of their games, in possibly a later form than what is in the previews, but we are hopeful that Hannes may have more of Lions 2 and even others. Watch this space for now….

A sad end to a possible Lions series…

Contributions: Hannes Sommer, Jazzcat


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/return-of-lions/
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Liverpool FC  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Liverpool Fc
1989 Ocean

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Nick Taylor
Graphics: Jason Brashill
Sound: Matthew Cannon

Unknown to many people apart from those at Ocean Software, Liverpool FC was to be also developed by Ocean Software in the early 90′s, and the team were hard at work on the title.

It seems Grandslam must have kicked up a bit of stink considering they had the licence, and Ocean were trying to cash in on it, so the title was axed… but not completely it seems.

Liverpool FC eventually turned into what is now Adidas Championship Football… well, at least part of it. Liverpool FC was to be a management/action game which featured a lot more arcade feel to it than most football/management games at that time. Kind of like a Sensible World of Soccer if you like.

Ocean decided after the mess of Liverpool FC and its licence being held at Grandslam, they quickly wanted to cash in on the up and coming World cup 90, and so got Nick Taylor and his team to turn the action part of the game into what is now known as the Adidas game, minus the management section.

However, Nick had been working on the Management section, and had not done much to the action side, so basically in the 6 week period they were given to finish the game, Nick had to write most of the game from scratch.

But to this day, there is a rather large chunk of the game that remained to be unseen, which was the management section. It now has been uncovered for GTW for the very first time… A very big glimpse of Ocean’s unknown Liverpool licence…

All the management features, almost complete, are in place in bits and pieces. We offer all the remains for you to download, including many executable bits and pieces from the management section, early parts of the action sections which turned into Adidas Soccer, and a load of graphics… possibly some unused.

Another BIG finding was the selection of Matt Cannon tunes for the game which were unused. Some of them were actually used in Adidas Soccer, but a fair few sub tunes were not. These have been uncovered here, along with a load of management SFX. HVSC were quite happy  

Regarding this rather shocking conversion… Nick said this about the game…

"With regards to the Liverpool license there was one – I think there was some confusion as Granstand (?) also had a Liverpool license and it turned out that one company could use the name of the club and the other one could use the badge or something like that.

The Adidas switch was due to the need to get a game out for the C64 pack for World Cup 1990, and we were to push on with Liverpool once that was out the way. Thing is, the Amiga/ST version took an eternity to finish and so Ocean lost interest which was fair enough."

Nick went on to produce other games for Hi-Tec and Codemasters, most famously Bee 52 and Bugs Bunny (Which sadly didn’t get released either).

When originally quizzed about the game, Gary Bracey couldn’t recall any conversion… especially because the head of Ocean was an Eveton fan. We hope that Gary will shed some light if he recalls any of the game from the screenshots.

Found… a piece of Ocean history we were not mean’t to see…

Contributions: Nick Taylor, David Spicer, Skeletor

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Nick Taylor speaks to GTW about 'Liverpool FC'...

"Liverpool FC - We started writing this for Ocean (I did C64 and Dave Spicer did Spectrum/Amstrad), but a few months from completion we were asked to write Adidas Championship Soccer in just 7 weeks (Boy did it show!) to get Ocean out of a hole with Commodore.

It was that instance that completely smashed my naive illusions about the whole game writing scene."

Nick Taylor.

David Spicer speaks to GTW about 'Liverpool FC'...

"An official "Liverpool Football Club" game, by Ocean. I worked on the Speccy version, whilst the C64 code was handled by Nick Taylor.

Nick later went on to do a lot of work for Hi-Tec and Codemasters (Black Hornet, Steg, etc). LFC was to be a player/manager type game, with a more 'arcadey' player part than past attempts at doing the same thing.

Come World Cup time, Ocean decided they wanted a footy game pronto and instructed us to turn the unfinished player part of LFC into "Adidas Championship Football" (which did get published). Time was pressing and Adidas turned into a bit of a mess - Nick had only worked on the management part and we basically had to throw together the complete C64 game in about 6 weeks.

From this point on the writing was on the wall for LFC. Some dumb decisions on our part gave Ocean plenty of rope to hang us and the whole thing just fizzled out, with the whole team ending up seriously out of pocket. If it wasn't for that bloody game, I'd probably have had a very nice career in the games industry, rather than dredging the bottom of the budget barrel over the following years!"


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/liverpool-fc/
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Locators Synd  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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If you love 8bit gaming Indie Retro News is certainly the place to be today, as we have yet another retro game to show you and this time it's ' Locators Synd Preview ' on the C64. Released by Genesis Project, this is a high quality and in their words promising new strategy game, translated from German to English by WertStahl and linked by L.A.Style. Think of it as an early Colonization , Civilization, The Settlers mix, as the game revolves around locators in the 12 century responsible for founding settlements, settling, financing and much more to receive the favour from the Lord of the lands.

I did happen to play this game for a short period today and from what I can tell so far it most certainly does look like a promising strategy game with some lovely lush graphics indeed, such as the map screen. The problem was for me at least, is it's a very deep and involving game that requires a lot of time and learning to build such things as settlements. That's not to say I can't do it, I've played some heavy games in my time, but it's limited to what I can achieve today.  So give it a go and let us know what you think :)


http://www.indieretronews.com/2016/12/locators-synd-preview-colonize-lands-in.html#more
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Lord MC  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1996 Cherry Software
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Hannes Sommer
Graphics: Hannes Sommer
Sound: Karl Sommer

A wonderful sequel to the popular Heavenbound game by Cosmos Designs was in production for Cherry Software in 1996, causing a storm by offering some great new gameplay, and this time from a left-right scrolling perspective.

A lot similiar to the Freds Back series, Lord MC Sun had the typical great graphics and sonics like past Cosmos Designs games, and would have surely been a great game release for the scene.

Unfortunately, as with many of the Cherry Software games, Lord MC Sun was scrapped. This was the likely event of companies not making a good profit anymore, and Cosmos Designs pulled out of the C64 scene after realising this… leaving 3 unfinished games behind.

It is not known how much more work Cosmos Designs actually completed since this preview and before it was scrapped, but hopefully contact with Hannes Sommer will establish if any more of the game exists anywhere.

Quite possibly we may see this some day on our screens in a later version.

More hunting for this one…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/lord-mc/
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Lost Robot 2  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Lost Robot 2
1993 S.Forstmann

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Sven Forstmann
Graphics: Sven Forstmann
Sound: N/A

An awesome little sequel to Lost Robot, which was released on a German disk magazine back in the early 90′s. Lost Robot 2 aimed to push things much further with a rather nifty little game. The game is a sideways scrolling shooter with some truely awesome hi-res graphics throughout. This is a real colour explosion of a game.

Unfortunately it is just a preview, as the game was never completed (For reasons unknown just yet). The game was coded in assembler using just an Action Replay machine code monitor. Just the one level is playable, though graphics for the second level is also included with the download.

It is a huge shame that this game never quite made it – it is one of the rare previews which has huge promise and one that will be sorely missed. At the very least, Sven has been very kind enough to put up all of his work out. 

We can enjoy what little work has been done and think about what might have been…

Contributions: Andreas Wirooks, Charles Haley


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/lost-robot-2/
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M.O.O.D.  v2.5  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Mood
1996 No Name
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Ghostrider, Perff
Graphics: Ghostrider, Perff, Kilroy, Perff
Sound: GRG

Since the craze of Wolfenstein and Doom on the PC’s in the early 90’s, we saw a new breakthrough in gaming. Seeing this kind of game even on the likes of a SNES or an Amiga was pretty impressive to say the least.

A C64 version of Doom?… Surely not? Well, No Name thought it was possible and therefore made it possible. After seeing hints that a C64 could replicate a port of Doom through various scene demos, "Mood" sent shockwaves though the C64 community as the first "Playable" version of Doom, and a pretty good one at that! Well, ok… its slightly more Wolfenstein than Doom, but we can live with that. It’s a C64 afterall, and this is still impressive.

CMD surprising does not offer a helping hand for this game. With no Super CPU’s or Ramdrives needed for this game, just a standard C64 and a joystick. This is one of the most impressive things you may see on a C64. Ok, so the graphics are not as defined as the PC versions, but compensation had to be made for the fact that we are running on an 8-bit processor, and almost full screen too.

MOOD was developed on the Amiga using cross-assembling and painting levels in various paint packages on the system. Perff created some converter programs which the Amiga used to convert the pictures to datafiles that could be transferred to the C64 and run.

The game is just as playable as its counterparts, and just as fast, even more so when you play on a C128. Most of the weapons from Doom are present too, although it takes a bit of squinting to realise what some things are. Movement of enemies is not quite as fluid as the original Doom, but so what?…

The game comes as a set of previews which have been collected over the years, one with a set of sound effects added and better maps and weapons, with no speed loss. Rumours however of a C64 based level editor were rubbished recently and its been confirmed that the level creation was a complex thing that only the developers could really do programatically.

Unfortunatly, production ceased on this game after over 6 years in development. Currently the No Name webpages have screenshots of another much later version of MOOD, with improved colours and status bar. The weapons have also been vastly improved, and I am guessing that there is sound (even music) even more integrated into the game. Incredible… The Christmas level was confirmed by Perff as being done by another developer within No Name. There is a possibility we may see it at somepoint soon.

In addition to what we have added already, we’ve bunged a load more preview bits in the zip file for you to have a look at, sourced from CSDB and the No Name site. But also additionally, Glenn Rune Gallefoss has kindly submitted to GTW all his SFX work which was mostly unused. This can be downloaded from the link above.

Recently Perff, one of the game’s developers put a special preview out of some more of the later stages of the game, including the new score status panels and running much much faster! Does this mean we could see more?? Well, Perff has suggested there is always the possibility, but in reality what we have here as a whole is likely to be all there ever is. We hope that might change though!

However, it is a title that we may well continue to see little bits and pieces added to over the years, so we await any more bits and pieces of this wonderful Wolfenstein clone!

A classic PC game which almost managed to fully squeeze its way onto the C64 in its own little way…

Contributions: Glenn Rune Gallefoss, Perff


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/mood/
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M45  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1986 Jukka Tapanimäki
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Jukka Tapanimäki
Graphics: Jukka Tapanimäki
Sound: Jukka Tapanimäki
M45 is an early icon driven game by the late Jukka Tapanimäki and was released recently by Triad.

The title is one of Jukka’s early developments before the likes of Zamzara and Netherworld came about, and sadly hasn’t been fully completed.  It’s a bit glitchy in places, but gives indication of what could have been a good title.

Sadly Jukka passed away in 2000, so we cannot find out anything more about the game at this stage and what the intentions were for it.  If anyone does happen to know more, then it would be good to hear from you.

For now, check out the game and see what you think!


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/m45/
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Mad Crash Racing  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Maniac Mansion Demo Disk
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Demonstration Disk for Maniac Mansion!
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Mario  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Mario Run  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Before you get too excited this isn't the original NES platformer of Super Mario converted to the C64, but a runner game by Christian and George Rottensteiner released as a game preview with a trainer by Laxity. Unlike the original 1985 hit classic, 'Mario Run' for the C64 involves non stop running to get to the end flag while collecting coins and avoiding being trapped behind objects or falling between the ledges.

For what is a very early preview version without any sound effects or being able to jump on enemies, Mario Run is an enjoyable experience that should be played at least once by C64 owners. What I really did like though, was listening to the Super Mario tune being played as a SID. So if you closed your eyes you would think you were back on the NES!


http://www.indieretronews.com/2015/08/mario-run-preview-non-stop-c64-runner.html
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Maze of the Mummy  (Demo)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Coming soon..
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Megatanoi  (preview 2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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199? Trisomic Boys
Status: No Download, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Louis Estorges (?), Sylvain Labbe (?)
Graphics: Christophe Colomeo (?), Souheil Riahi (?)
Sound: Unknown
Other: Paul Fogarty (Marketer)

Megatanio was a game first mentioned by Paul Fogarty as a game by Trisomic Boys being produced in the early 90’s.

Trisomic Boys were the game development part of the Babygang group, who did Crazy Cars 3 at a later date for Titus.

The game allowed you to race a bike of your choice through a 3D tunnel (ala Stun Runner style).  There was an FLI intro where you could pick your bike to race on.  The main game itself wasn’t complete, but was in a playable state.

Paul Fogarty was trying to get someone to pick up the game to market, but as the C64 market was dwindling badly – he never managed to get anyone to pick it up.  In the end, the guys went onto Crazy Cars 3 and did that instead.

Only Paul seems to have the only remaining copy of the game – not even the coder has the game any longer, and Paul is hoping to get it tidied up and NTSC fixed before it is released to the world.  Either Paul or Jason Kelk will let us know when this is about to happen and we’ll get things prepared to add here!

Watch this space!


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/megatanio/
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Microprose Soccer V1  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Microprose Soccer V1
1988 Microprose

Status: Full Game, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Chris Yates
Graphics: Jon Hare
Sound: Martin Galway

Just a quick entry to add an early version of Microprose Soccer before it was released.

What is so different you ask?…. Well, not a great deal in the actual game (apart from slight differences in the replay and other minute tweaks/glitches), but the menu system is completely different compared to the final game.

Actually, the menus are the same as what were published in the Commodore User preview pages, with a funny slanted effect in some parts.

But an additional bonus is that one of the early previews includes a previously unheard Martin Galway tune. There may be more tucked away too maybe, but overall worth an entry as something of interest to check out and see progression to what was eventually released.

Thanks to Jon Hare for giving us permission to upload! And thanks also to Adam Morton for the single file fix to the game (due to inconsistencies with the loader).

Case closed!

Contributions: Jon Hare, Adam Morton


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/microprose-soccer-v1/
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Midwinter  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1990 Rainbird (?)
Status: Preview, Findability: 1/5

Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

Hmmm…i’m not 100% sure about this one, but thanks to Romppainen we are able to highlight what seems to be a possible conversion of the impressive Midwinter game from the Amiga/ST. This was a strategy game developed by Mike Singleton and even in the press it was clear that this could never get a proper conversion on the C64 without some epic programming feat.

CSDB has hosted a crack by Lazer for a while now, which contains pretty much a static slideshow of C64 based screens showing gameplay and various parts of the game. Was this just a fan of the game doing some mockups?… a joke for the scene or a real conversion that never got past the proof of concepts in this demo?

Well, one thing is that we know that Midwinter was apparently rumoured as a possible C64GS title, so are these proofs from this? Details about a possible cartridge version was mentioned in an interview with Mike Singleton from Zzap 64 1991. It was talked about doing the game as a sprite based game and making use of cartridge technology, but it was only probably talk to be honest.

It’s early days – do you know more?…

For now, check out the impressive stills and judge for yourself!

Contributions: Romppainen, Andrew Fisher


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/midwinter/
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Mike the Magic Dragon  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Mike The Dragon
1997 Protovision

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Malte Mundt
Graphics: Gabi Kittner, Malte Mundt, Stefan Gutsch
Sound: Lars Hutzelmann, Jan Hammer

The premier issue of the German C64 magazine GO64!, issue 03/97, featured an article about the at that time quite unknown game producing crew, PROTOVISION. Their first game, Stroke World, was announced there, as well as the famous SuperCPU shoot’em up Metal Dust, which finally was released in 2005. There is also a mention of a project named "Hurrican" which eventually later turned into the "Turrican 3 V1" project also described here on GTW. But there was one other game mentioned of which we never heard of again: "Mike the Magic Dragon".

Started in 1996, Mike the Magic Dragon was a conversion of the game with the same name from the Amiga. In fact, Mike the Magic Dragon was a very early Amiga release (1987, Kingsoft). It featured music from Crocket’s Theme and graphics in a style never seen before. Set in a fantasy realm, the little dragon Mike had to escape from various castles by solving a riddle and collecting diamonds.

The task was to collect letters in the right order to form a word, and the word always was a term from the computer world. The diamonds had to be collected completely, then a key would appear. Collecting the key, the game would check if the letters had been collected in the right order. If not, you had to re-collect them (but not the diamonds), else you reached the next level. On some platforms some enemies made your life harder. After time was up, you didn’t lose a life, however a spider came from above hunting you down.

Each level consisted of a great pixel artwork by Gabi Kittner, featuring a famous castle, and in fact this graphics plus the unusual use of the Miami Vice tune gave the game its extraordinary atmosphere.

The C64 conversion by Protovision was to be based on the same graphics converted from Amiga, using the Godot image processing tool. The special thing was that the graphics on the C64 were not in multi-color (160×200, 3 colors in an 8×8 square + background color), but instead in hires (320×200, only 2 colors and no extra background color per 8×8 square). In fact the unique graphic style coincidentally allowed a very good conversion to the C64. Of course still a lot of re-touching was required and actually done for almost all levels (17 of 21).

The Amiga game had the same castle for three levels in different "atmospheres": For example at night, at daylight, or in summer and in autumn etc. On the Amiga this was done by tricky palette changes, using the same picture. Due to the limit of C64 colors (16 vs. 4096) this didn’t look as good on C64, but it was considered to have at least two of the three castle pics each, so reducing the amount of levels to 2/3 of the original, which would not have been a problem.

Development was severely slowed down because the game’s author, Malte Mundt alias Thunderblade of Protovision, was heavily involved in releasing the monthly printed GO64! magazine from 1997 on. In 1998, he even released a monthly full-color Amiga magazine, the "Amiga Fever", in Germany (20.000 copies were printed each month!), which of course meant even less time for game coding.Another reason why the game was not continued probably was that it was based on converted graphics without actually having the legal rights to use them.

A very playable preview of the first level exists, but was never released. It features Mike, the elevators, the diamonds and letters but not the enemies. Also the parachute sprite is missing. Apart from that, the first level completely works. Today, Games That Weren’t can present it to the public as Thunderblade provided it to us.

And not only that! We got four D64 images with all level graphics in hires (Doodle) format, some IFF pictures from Amiga, the converted but not yet retouched title picture in Hires-FLI and all Source Code to the game. Thunderblade states that whoever wants can take it and finish the game. He warns though that the code may be quite crappy in places.  

A neat platformer with unusual atmosphere…..

Contributions: Jazzcat, Ian Coog

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"Hi altogether... Well, the idea for the game 'Mike the Magic Dragon' was born because the original Amiga game had such unique graphics. Just for fun, I had tried to convert some of them to the C64 using the great 'Godot' image processing tool. I found that 'Godot' could produce amazingly good results when converting these pictures into hires (320x200 but with only 2 color in one cursor-block!). Why not use these graphics in a game then? In a conversion?

Furthermore I always loved the Amiga game because it had such a great fantasy atmosphere. 'Mike' is a Jump'n Run, but unlike all other Jump'n Runs which are set in a 'comic', or even 'bubble gum' world, this title was completely different. It actually had some 'magic' as promised in the title. Instead of a comic, this game more looked like a fairy-tale! I just loved these castle-pictures, which in the game changed from night to day or from summer to winter.

The game had been my favourite game for a long time, I think I first played it in 1988 or so when a classmate showed it to me on his new Amiga. The gameplay itself was kinda simple, like 'Jumpman Junior' maybe, with some extensions, so the special thing were the graphics and, of course, 'Crockett's theme' - the famous Miami Vice music I fell in love with immediately - which was playing in the background of the Amiga version.

I started working on my C64 version of 'Mike' in 1996 or 97 I think. But then I also began my studies, plus my activities for the famous GO64! magazine started. When I began coding the game, there were still magazines like the GAME ON and Magic Disk left -both heavily published games-, and people who actually bought them. But as you all know, even the hardcore gamers disappeared in the late 90's and I wondered how many people actually would really play my game. It was a "simple" Jump'n Run after all - at least at first sight; you had to play it a while to get into its atmosphere (it was like this on Amiga).

With GO64!, my studies and later the Amiga Fever magazine project getting the priority, 'Mike' somehow starved. For a long time I could not decide whether to give it up or not, and as soon as I wanted to give it up and took a 'last look' at the level graphics, I again could not decide! ;-) Realistically however I recently realized that I probably won't have the time to touch it again and so I thought: Why not releasing all there is - the graphics, the music and of course the source code! Someone else might pick it up and finish this game. If you do, let me know!

Cheers,

ThunderBlade."

Malte Mundt.

All source and graphics of 'Mike the Magic Dragon' is available as D64 images in the 'Download' section of this game.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/mike-the-dragon/
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MiniDon  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Minima Reloaded v1.2. (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Minimus  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Mission X  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Note :  Is preview state the reason for the corrupted background?

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19?? Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Thomas Egeskov Petersen

Mission X is a cool looking sideways scrolling shooter with cool Uridium style backgrounds.

It’s a short map, as you start hitting random parts of the game’s code as it runs out of map to show, but its enough to give an indication of how this could have been.

There are no credits apart from sound, so it could be very hard to track anything down of this one. We’re hopeful though and hope to unearth something on the game very soon.

Watch this space!



http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/mission-x/
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Molar Madness  (preview V2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Monster Museum  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Monster Museum
1989 Palace Software

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Andy Wilson
Graphics: Gary Carr
Sound: Richard Joseph

Monster Museum was mentioned in March 1989 of The Games Machine as coming soon with the following blurb – "Other games on Palace’s mean menu include Monster Museum, an arcade adventure with graphics by Gary Carr and main programming by Andy Wilson (Dan Dare fame)." … Was this another result of Palace sinking and Titus not wanting to pick up and release?

When we did some research on the net, some Amstrad sites were found to have listed it, but it is missing for them too. So we had to keep digging, firstly by finding some of the Gang of Five such as Andy Wilson to find out more.

In early 2009, GTW were in touch with one of the Gang of Five, who suggested that they had a bunch of disks for Monster Museum, but wasn’t sure what was on them. GTW obtained the disks and backed these up, but were unable to release what we found until permission was granted from the original coder Andy Wilson.

Upon the disks we were surprised to find many different executable builds of the game from a year’s span from 1989 to 1990, and even more so to hear some long lost tunes by the late Richard Joseph. The game itself is ironically a mix of Barbarian 2 and Dan Dare, with a female lead role. Very exciting findings and something we were despearate to share with people, hence the screenshots we originally leaked!

Firstly in our hunt for the coder Andy Wilson, we located artist Gary Carr, who sadly didn’t know the whereabouts of Andy… but shed some light on the game’s development for us. After Barbarian 1 and 2, Palace changed direction slightly and started commisioning games from external teams. Monster Museum was a project that wasn’t fully fleshed out and didn’t come with much of a team, but Gary was asked to take on the project form an artisitc point of view and worked with Andy on the game concepts.

The premise of the game was particularly different to most, as you play a female character in the game in a proper substantial role, some years pre-dating Tomb Raider. This was quite odd for 1989!
 However, things get very weird/co-incidental when we learn that the lead character is the daughter of a museum curator, is dressed in tight shorts, a vest top and has pony style hair!…. Very spooky, but Gary quickly adds this is completely co-incidental as the game never saw the light of day.

The story behind the game we learn is that you are locked in the museum over night and the exhibits come to life (Of which Gary mentions that there has ironically been a cheesy movie along those lines recently – Night in the Museum). The game world takes place over a number of exhibit spaces including: Egyptian, Prehistoric, Greek Mythology and Science (Being more like science fiction to make it more visually interesting). The game as a whole was broken into two parts and single load – the second part borrowing a lot in terms of displays from the first part it seems with different puzzles. Using various objects you must solve various puzzles.

Well, all good and everything… but we had to find Andy to be able to show you it in the flesh!… And that we did!…A few weeks later we got some developer leads and managed to trace Andy who was more than happy for us to release the game to the world!… He himself hadn’t seen it for about 20 years!

We learn from Andy that Monster Museum was the last game he ever worked on before leaving the games industry for good and going into a different profession. Monster Museum came about as a result of working with the likes of Simon Birrell (Known from their Virgin Software days). Simon helped Andy out with the design and odd ideas, whilst Steve Webb (ex of Virgin) was doing the Amstrad conversion (Hope you are noting this CPC readers!) and Patricia Mitchell (another ex-Virgin Software person) was responsible for the project management. Some of Simon’s ideas submitted can be found here, as well as a map produced of the game…

Andy recalls working closely with Gary on getting, what was considered at the time to be some great animations – including a Head biting plant and a Toilet Monster with some humourous features throughout.

One of the key findings with the game has to be the music by the late Richard Joseph – a number of short tunes and various sfx which have been great to find just a little bit short of the 2nd anniversary of his sad passing. It was quite haunting to hear the tunes for the first time as a result. Andy recalls Richard coming down to his place and playing him Herschell Gordon Lewis’ "Blood Feast" soundtrack (Which Simon Birrell had given him a cassette of) – this was as possible inspiration for the game’s tunes and sound effects.

The game itself was mostly complete – believed to just be around 5-10% away from completion – so we have had to give it preview status (But we’re sure that you should find this certainly playable!). The reason for its non-release?…. Well, the game remained unfinished after missing a couple of deadlines and Andy hit some serious technical problems – Andy hated multi-load games and was determined to fit it into 64K, which mean’t he couldn’t afford to continue development without further advances, and Palace were not in a position to pay anyone anything. Andy eventually parted ways with Palace and left the industry. Additionally contributing factors according to Gary were that the team were never really together to make it happen quickly enough (Space between office, coder, artist etc was quite far!). Simon Birrell took over the game to try and finish it off, but by 1990, Palace were subject of a takeover, the C64 was a dying platform in their eyes… and the eventual takeover company Titus decided to drop the title. And that was the end of Monster Museum.

So now we begin to conclude Monster Museum and what has been a great finding!…. It’s a wonderful look at the excellent talent of Andy Wilson that follows on from the excellent Dan Dare game and its a huge shame this didn’t get finished off. 6R6 has very kindly tidied up the game and fixed a few issues and added some extra keys such as 1 to skip screens and 2 to get different items. Along with the download we have included all the original disks that were backed up with the different builds and also the scanned disk labels – so its a bit of a download!  

We should be hearing more about the game soon, but for now… enjoy this great finding and our great start for 2009. This isn’t the last of it either!

Case very much almost closed!…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/monster-museum/
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Monstics Mystery II  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1992 Francois Blanchette
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Francois Blanchette
Graphics: Francois Blanchette
Sound: Unknown

Our next entry is a rather interesting Maniac Mansion style game written by Francois Blanchette back in 1986.

The game in 2014 has been resurrected in its final state in 1992, restored and properly named by Atlantis/F4CG.   Unfortunately this is all that remains of the game, and a second development disk went missing a long time ago.  This particular version which has been fully preserved contains two lost title pictures, level packing and some additional information stored away in the documentation file.

It is great to see something of this game preserved, but this will be it – with the programmer confirming that they checked all their disks and could not find any later copy.  So unless someone comes forward with a disk which Francois had forgotten about,  then what you see here is the definitive version.

Overall, its not bad and certainly worth a look to see what might have been.  Hopefully at some point the coder will pop by to give their recollections about the game’s development – as we have no idea what the intentions for the game were.  Also, it seems to be a sequel – but what of the first game?

More to come on this one soon!

Contributions: Joachim Wijnhoven, Dr Strange


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/monstics-mystery-2/
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Mood  (Preview v2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Mood
1996 No Name

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Ghostrider, Perff
Graphics: Ghostrider, Perff, Kilroy, Perff
Sound: GRG

Since the craze of Wolfenstein and Doom on the PC’s in the early 90′s, we saw a new breakthrough in gaming. Seeing this kind of game even on the likes of a SNES or an Amiga was pretty impressive to say the least.

A C64 version of Doom?… Surely not? Well, No Name thought it was possible and therefore made it possible. After seeing hints that a C64 could replicate a port of Doom through various scene demos, "Mood" sent shockwaves though the C64 community as the first "Playable" version of Doom, and a pretty good one at that! Well, ok… its slightly more Wolfenstein than Doom, but we can live with that. It’s a C64 afterall, and this is still impressive.

CMD surprising does not offer a helping hand for this game. With no Super CPU’s or Ramdrives needed for this game, just a standard C64 and a joystick. This is one of the most impressive things you may see on a C64. Ok, so the graphics are not as defined as the PC versions, but compensation had to be made for the fact that we are running on an 8-bit processor, and almost full screen too.

MOOD was developed on the Amiga using cross-assembling and painting levels in various paint packages on the system. Perff created some converter programs which the Amiga used to convert the pictures to datafiles that could be transferred to the C64 and run.

The game is just as playable as its counterparts, and just as fast, even more so when you play on a C128. Most of the weapons from Doom are present too, although it takes a bit of squinting to realise what some things are. Movement of enemies is not quite as fluid as the original Doom, but so what?…

The game comes as a set of previews which have been collected over the years, one with a set of sound effects added and better maps and weapons, with no speed loss. Rumours however of a C64 based level editor were rubbished recently and its been confirmed that the level creation was a complex thing that only the developers could really do programatically.

Unfortunatly, production ceased on this game after over 6 years in development. Currently the No Name webpages have screenshots of another much later version of MOOD, with improved colours and status bar. The weapons have also been vastly improved, and I am guessing that there is sound (even music) even more integrated into the game. Incredible… The Christmas level was confirmed by Perff as being done by another developer within No Name. There is a possibility we may see it at somepoint soon.

In addition to what we have added already, we’ve bunged a load more preview bits in the zip file for you to have a look at, sourced from CSDB and the No Name site. But also additionally, Glenn Rune Gallefoss has kindly submitted to GTW all his SFX work which was mostly unused. This can be downloaded from the link above.

Recently Perff, one of the game’s developers put a special preview out of some more of the later stages of the game, including the new score status panels and running much much faster! Does this mean we could see more?? Well, Perff has suggested there is always the possibility, but in reality what we have here as a whole is likely to be all there ever is. We hope that might change though!

However, it is a title that we may well continue to see little bits and pieces added to over the years, so we await any more bits and pieces of this wonderful Wolfenstein clone!

A classic PC game which almost managed to fully squeeze its way onto the C64 in its own little way…

Contributions: Glenn Rune Gallefoss, Perff


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/mood/
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Moonfall  v1  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Triad recently released an early build of Moonfall, which was a vector game by the late Jukka Tapanimäki.

The game was developed in 1989, but heavy delays meant that Hewson/21st Century Entertainment didn’t get to release the game until 1991.

This earlier build has a different panel, less vectors (but runs faster as a result).  It’s an interesting look at how the game was shaping up early on!


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2015/05/moonfall-v1-c64/
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Moonstone  (preview V2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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2005 Michelangelo Carbonara
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Michelangelo Carbonara
Graphics: Michelangelo Carbonara
Sound: Unknown
Also known as: Moonstone - A hard days knight

Also known as Moonstone – A hard days knight, this is an unofficial conversion of the Mindscape Amiga game, and a very good start too which has been made!

There are some cool introduction sequence screens, followed by some brief actions scenes which you can control.  It all looked very promising when first released to the world back in 2005.

It was coder Michelangelo Carbonara’s first serious attempt at programming on the Commodore 64, and the game was unfortunately dropped when he realized it had to depend too much on graphics.  At the time, he didn’t know any graphic artists and everything was ripped from the Amiga.

Will it ever get completed and see the light of day? Michelangelo says that it could someday be redeveloped, now that he has a solid friendship with graphic artist Raffox – so watch this space.

For now, Michelangelo has dug out another preview of the game which has a bit more interactivity on the menus.  On the menu screen, you can select the number of players and then go to “Select Knights” (Practice option not available) and you can choose the colour and edit the name of the knights.  After which you get a map where you can select an area.  There is a fight with a boar if you just press fire on the map.  Each of the 4 players takes turns, and when all players have walked, there is a screen with the moon that announces the coming of a new day.

We hope that the coder does decide to resurrect the game again some day – but for now, check out what could have been.

Contributions: Michelangelo Carbonara


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/moonstone/
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Moonstone  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
2005 Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Michelangelo Carbonara
Graphics: Michelangelo Carbonara
Sound: Unknown
Also known as: Moonstone - A hard days knight

Also known as Moonstone – A hard days knight, this is an unofficial conversion of the Mindscape Amiga game, and a very good start too which has been made!

There are some cool introduction sequence screens, followed by some brief actions scenes which you can control.

It all looked very promising when first released to the world back in 2005, but it seems the project has well and truly stalled.

Will it ever get completed and see the light of day? We guess real life has got in the way, but maybe at the very least we can learn if anything more was ever produced than this preview.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/moonstone/
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Mortal Kombat 2  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1998 Hermit Software

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Mihály Horváth
Graphics: Mihály Horváth
Sound: Various

A big big shock for you now, as we take a look at a GTW entry for Mortal Kombat 2!… Completely from nowhere has an unofficial conversion of the sequel appeared, and a bloody good looking conversion too!

Mortal Kombat 2′s C64 conversion was started by Hungarian crew Hermit Software back in 1998, and instead of just trying to do some wired ports of the digitized characters, the game features some properly pixeled graphics which work very well within the graphical limitations of the C64 (Though of course with hi-res FLI and interlacing you would probably get as good as Megadrive  )

Very unfortunately, the game never got to a playable stage, but there is a demo which shows one of the characters moving around on a test level. Additionally there are many parts including the introduction sequence, title screens, character selection screens (functional) which all look very impressive indeed!

Unfortunately also, the project has been scrapped and will never get completed it seems… unless you want to pick the project up from Hermit Software!

We are guessing that this conversion was done for pure fun, and it looks as if a lot of heart has been put into the conversion… as much as the Pinball Dreams conversion. Well worth checking out to see just how possible such a complex fighting game could work on the C64!

Now who is going to finish it??

A fantastic conversion, sadly never completed…



http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/mortal-kombat-2/
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Motorman  (preview v2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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*
Here's some interesting news for fans of the NES classic Excitebike. A playable preview of a C64 clone called Motorman developed by Dr. Strange of Atlantis and Propaganda Magazine has just been released.

The preview lets you play against 2 cpu and 1 human opponent, on 1 track which features jumps, oil, rocks, and other obstacles which you either have to negotiate by switching lanes or doing wheelies etc. Controls seem pretty good, the bike responds well enough to do somersaults on the big jumps, and wheelie over the barrels.   While it is pretty short on features and has no title screen, this preview definitely shows potential that it could be very nice motorbike racer, and when played with few friends, a whole heap of fun! 


http://www.indieretronews.com/2016/11/motorman-atlantiss-excitebike-clone-for.html
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Mythos  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Mythos
199? Crest

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Crossbow / Crest
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: DRAX

A fantastic Super Zelda clone written for the C64 by Crossbow/Crest and was a secret part to the demo Krestage 3. This awesome clone has to be seen to be believed. Unfortunately it seems we will never see a full version of this game anytime soon.

When you think about a Zelda conversion on the C64, you think of getting something which is fairly close to the NES versions in terms of graphics. Well, the C64 version does its best to blow you away by providing a conversion which looks almost identical to the 16-bit Snes version. A really fantastic achievement and a testament to the awesome graphical work which has been done.

The demo allows you to walk around a very accurate representation of Zelda’s map, with the ability to swish your sword and even chop the greenary of the map like in the original game. It seems that quite a big chunk of the map is in place, and the clone/conversion was well on its way to becoming a fully fledged game.

The game was ditched after Crossbow lost interest in the development and time was against him. This seems therefore to be a mere proof of concept. To complete a game of this scale would take so much blood and sweat for maybe only a thousand or so who may play it. We assume that the hidden part is all that was ever created, though there may be some small bits and pieces that Crossbow may show someday. This seems to be it, and all that may ever be sadly  

We’d love this game to not be a GTW, but sadly it seems it indeed is and is another one to chuck into the archives…

A fantastic C64 Super Zelda conversion… case closed…

Contributions: Paul Koller, Brian Bagnall, Paul Bearer


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/mythos/
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Nether  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1997 Computer Workshops
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Cameron Kaiser (?)
Graphics: Cameron Kaiser (?)
Sound: Cameron Kaiser

Nether is a game that I can remember from the days of Commodore Scene, being touted as a Doom clone. Eventually when I saw a preview, I was a little underwealmed, and then forgot about the game.

The game’s development had however been continuing way into 2004 – where a new engine was developed called Nether G-II. It was lacking sprites though, but apparently was a lot more sophisticated compared to the old blocky and slow engine. Although we sound critical, the game was one of the first engines to have light sourcing included – it just was character block blocky and slow.

We assume that the game was to be a straight Doom clone, as this is how the game was sold on their website (which we’ve grabbed an archived copy for you to see – see Creator Speaks).

What happened to the game?…. We assume that Cameron Kaiser got bored of the development or real life took over and the game got permently parked. There have been no updates since around 2004, so we assume that the project is now officially dead.

What happened to the game overall? …. do you know more?

Contributions: Kevin Tilley

---

From Computer Workshops' Official Nether Preview Page...

3-D, texturemapping and lightsourcing in real time on a stock 64.
Play DOOM on your Commodore 64, and you don't need a SuperCPU to do it.
Last modify September 2009. You're visitor 15926.

See some screenshots!
Check out and download the alpha version! (warning: this uses the old webpages, since we won't be updating them)

Next Nether News

Here's the story so far, for those of you who haven't been following -- for shame!: We released Nether G-I (which you can download from here) to an eager public as an alpha test a while back. It was generally well received, but it could have been made a lot better. So, believing that the best product is the best product (foolish, eh? :-), we're developing a new, more sophisticated version of Nether called Generation II, or Nether G-II for short.
As of 11 December 2004: The current sprite-less Nether G-II is finished ... but Nether itself needs sprites for gameplay. Fortunately, not all games do, and there's going to be a title in particular that will use the 3-D engine sans sprites, right now. Tune in for more info.

As of 16 October 2002: Here's what's happened so far. Thanks to new unrolling optimizations, plus a special 1-byte lighting cache to speed up sector texture lighting computation, we now have an engine that has achieved 10fps (raw render time) reliably with all lighting and enhanced texture effects -- on the stock C64! (It's potentially enormously faster on the SCPU but this game is targeted for the stock system, just as we've always said.)
This engine renders 12-stage turns (no more 90-degree jumps) as well, for smoother motion, and preserves the entire G-I lighting model.
Look for us at VCF 5.0 October 26 -- we'll be showing a tech demo of Nether G2 at the Micro-Portables exhibit hosted by programmer Cameron Kaiser! Visit the Vintage Computer Festival web site at www.vintage.org.

As of 22 March 2002: Much has happened since our last update. All the map bugs, including the front tile lighting problem, have been repaired. For the sake of expediency, the old blackout hack for looking around corners has been implemented (it was also in G-I). The spherical aberrations unmasked by the improved fidelity TIM have been recomputed and smoothed out to an acceptable level, and a few other detected glitches in the lookup tables for views and skews have been tweaked.

Optimization is nearly complete. Alas, it seems we can't get much faster than 9fps or so; average speed is around 7, which is still a considerable gain over G-I. The TIM draw-a-pixel loop has been special-cased and unrolled into very long simple sequences for drawing particular texel strips of varying height. While this generates a considerably larger object file (ballooning to 11K from 5K) it has shaved over four jiffies/frame off render time, bringing the speed up noticibly. If we can squeeze one more jiffy out of the runtime, we're probably in good shape.

After that, strafe support will be added, and then sprites.

As of 27 October 2001: Work continues. A major breakthrough last evening; the jitter in the texture mapper has now been cleaned up with a new (although slower) patch to the TIM library. This slows down rendering somewhat but the result is a very, very clean mapping with no jitter. Alas, the improved TIM is now unmasking previously imperceptible spherical aberrations in the lookup tables used for mapping the environment, which means these will have to be regenerated. Too accurate for its own good! But we're not too angry. :-)

There are also still the map bugs mentioned previously, but these are now top priority. Once repaired, the lookup tables will be tweaked and then the optimization will begin. As previously mentioned, target engine speed is 10-15fps.


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/nether/
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Nuclear Nick  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1985 Electric Dreams
Status: No Download, Findability: 1/5

Coding: Ron Rosen, Frank Cohen (?)
Graphics: Art Huff
Sound: Unknown

Nuclear Nick was one of a few titles advertised by Electric Dreams back in issue 8 of Zzap 64 games. Nuclear Nick was to be part of a double pack with a game called Scooter.

It never quite surfaced, but after a bit of digging – we find that the game was released by Americana Software on the Atari

The game looks very much like Ollies Follies, which was released on the C64 by Americana… This suggests that Frank Cohen could have been the developer, but Ron Rosen is listed as developer for the Atari and did develop Polar Pierre on the C64. So was it either of those developers?

Art Huff has confirmed that he did artwork (at least on the Atari version), but sadly no longer has any of his work.

Early days, but at least we can play something of the game on the Atari for now…. Did the C64 version get far?

Well, thanks to Rich Hinton on the Commodore 64 Facebook group – Rich had come forward with a series of US Gold master disks which he had from his childhood days, when a friend of the family would give them copies to try out.  Within the set was a preview copy of Nuclear Nick, and was apparently still under development.

Rich passed on the disks to Peepo, where Sailor of Triad did some tidy ups for a proper release for the first time.

Overall the game is very similar to the likes of Ollies Follies, but it is a great discovery – and hopefully we will find out more and if the game was ever actually completed.  Check it out!

Contributions: Brendan Phoenix, Rich Hinton, Sailor, Peepo, SLC, Jazzcat


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/nuclear-nick/
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Nuker  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Nuker
198? Thalamus

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Stuart Cook
Graphics: Ned Langman
Sound: Unknown

Hidden in the Thalamus archives is a game called Nuker. A bizzare name, but a rather interesting game!…

Standing for "NUclear SnooKER", the obective is for the player to guide his spherical craft around randomly shaped areas, shooting spherical toxic dumps into pockets. The player is constantly frustrated by enemy craft but you can gain some excellent power up’s.

The game is 8 directional scrolling with parallax effects, viewed from above in assorted spacecrafts. Due to cash flow problems Paranoid Software (the games developer team) closed down at this point and the game never saw the light of day.

Stu Cook originally got in touch with GTW, and believed he may have something of the game to uncover. However things went quiet and nothing came about. Luckily though in 2011, C64.com preserved a bunch of Darren Melbourne’s disks and GTW64 filtered through to see what had been found. On there was a few versions of Nuker, pretty much complete – one complete with sound effects!

And here it is for you to finally enjoy! ….It is a neat little game, with a classic 1987 feel to it. It gets a little repetitive and there are far too many levels, but it is fantastic to see a Thalamus title preserved at long last! (Thanks to Slator for the fixes!)

Check it out! … Case closed!…

Contributions: Darren Melbourne, Stu Cook, C64.com, Slator, The Ignorance

---

Stuart Cook speaks about work on Nuker...

"Nuker was a game that should have been published, but never was. 'Nuclear Snooker' was an 8 directional scrolling game (parallaxing too!) that was viewed from above assorted spacecraft, that were arranged as various tables of different shapes and sizes.

 The craft had assorted radiation pods on top of them that had to be jettisoned into space by pushing them through 'holes' in the craft. If I remember correctly, it was a battle against time to use a 'cue' to pot them off the ship before the radiation levels got too high. 

 The cue gained 'power ups' as the levels progressed, from 1 direction ability (left right) to adding up/down and diagonal potting ability, followed by more power etc.

 Also, assorted alien enemies tried to stop you as you were doing all of this. I may have a disk with the game on it somewhere, but I'm not sure, it has been 20 years. I'll see what I can dig up."

Stuart Cook.

Darren Melbourne speaks about work on Nuker...

"The game was being written for Thalamus but despite claims to the contrary it was a long way from being finished.

The game was by modern standards at Pre-Alpha stage or Alpha at best. The game was being tested and reviewed by Thalamus when it sadly went into administration.

It's my belief that we probably had another three months development time to ensure that the game was up to the standards that had been previously set by Thalamus's other titles."
\
http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/nuker/
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Nuts  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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O-pat-ko-no  (Preview v2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Octron  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Octron
2007 Enthusi

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Enthusi
Graphics: Enthusi, JSL
Sound: N/A

Octron was Enthusi’s first attempt at game coding around 2007-2008 time – the game being an impressive 8 player Tron game!

To play with 4 players, you would need a 4 player adaptor, and for 8 – two C64′s and two 4 player adapters, with the C64′s connected via a floppy serial cable.

The preview included here to download has all 8 players available. It is still at a fairly early stage, but does have a loading screen created by JSL and in place.
 An earlier version has a map displayed for each player after they have game over. Most graphics are place holders

So what happened to the game? Enthusi sadly lost interest in developing the game, and so it was resigned to the scrapheap. More details of the game can be read in Creators Speaks.

What you see here is all that remains of the game, so it is an open and shut case!

Contributions: Enthusi, Jazzcat

---

Enthusi speaks about work on Octron:

"Octron started out as my first attempt in game coding. I picked up work on it in 2007 and 2008 again but instead of finishing what is there, I'd rather rewrite it from scratch now, which again is not too likely to happen any time soon. So here it is. Sorry JSL for keeping your very nice title screen hidden for so long!

The idea was to have an 8 player Tron game. The earlier version included still features a menu to select number of players. This fully works.  To play with > 2 people use a 4 player adapter (the kind, i.e. Bombmania requires). To play with i.e. 8 people you need two c64s and two 4-player adapters. Connect both C64 via floppy serial cable. Launch 'send' on one of the two (load it before you connect the c64s) and SYS 61061 after reset on the other before you start the game.

The one that runs 'SEND' is a mere server for the 4 joysticks, no screen output.
 The game works with up to 8 players at this stage :)  I had plans and some code to use software scrolling instead and 8 different colors for the trails etc... The map in the lower border isnt fine tuned yet. In the 'earlier' version, a map for each player gets displayed after game over.

BEWARE, you can drive into free memory of the c64 once you leave the playfield ;-)
 Enjoy if you can. Maybe one day I will return to this early attempt of mine.
 All gfx here except for the title screen of course are mere place holders by me. Note that the steering is still experimental ;-)  Push the joy left/right from the vehicles perspective so to say. It will turn on RELEASE."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/octron/
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Omega Ceti  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1987 Ian Moran
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Ian Moran
Graphics: Ian Moran
Sound: Matt Gray

Omega Ceti is a title that has been around for some time, possibly first surfacing on Compunet as a preview.

The game is an interesting Uridium clone of sorts – which has a split screen display for two players to fly over a dreadnought and fight together. Quite a unique approach. The game was written by a chap called Ian Moran, who produced another Uridium’esq game that never was called Hyper Galactic Warrior. We believe that Hyper Galactic Warrior may have been born from this original demo, which Ian suggests he developed in 1986.

It’s a well produced game for its time, and has plenty of promise. What stopped Ian from finishing it? Was it real life commitments, or a case of too many Uridium clones on the market?

Well, Ian got in touch and confirmed that the game was never more than a scratch about to upload to compunet.  They were also written in a way using the Expert Cartridge which meant the game was not really expandable.   Ian was basically playing and testing things out.  See Creator Speaks for more details.

This therefore draws a conclusion to this title and solves the mystery.  This is as far as the game ever got, and therefore is case closed!

Contributions: Ian Moran, Codetapper

---

Ian Moran talks about his development work on Hyper Galactic Warrior and Omega Ceti:

“I had actually forgotten about Hyper Galactic Warrior, which I still think is a pretty good title. The demo was never more than a scratch about to upload to compunet, which was always a great source of inspiration and community.

I do remember Omega Ceti, which I wanted to use a raster interrupt for split screen scrolling, and I had felt really privileged that Matt Gray had offered up the audio track, which I think is great, but again it was only ever a little demo’ette for fun, I had seen Ceti cracked, even with a trainer, just like an actual ‘proper’ title, rather than games that weren’t.

I’d done a little string of demos that were none interactive, I suppose these were a progression from that, I coded on commodore 64 (actually a C128) for sometime after I had got my Amiga, simply because it was accessible. You’d switch it on, and you could be coding in less time than it takes us to boot a PC today, or an Amiga then.

So why were they games that weren’t?, well, I had a Trilogic Expert cartridge, you know the sort of thing, similar to the more well known ‘Action Replay’, you could freeze, edit and continue code, these would allow you to write machine code a code monitor, writing machine code was as straightforward as writing basic, which was great, but if you wanted to add or change anything significantly you would need to manually relocate blocks of code and change each and every piece of calling code, While there were techniques to mitigate these limitations, doing something more than scratching a demo together would require exponentially more effort.

All my c64 demos were done firstly for play and secondly to take an active part on compunet, part of a community, all of which must have been enough of an incentive to carry on, I moved on to the Amiga, and 25 years later I’m still writing games.

Early Amiga titles were covered by your friends site codetapper…

http://www.codetapper.com/amiga/interviews/ian-moran/

Thanks for asking and for hosting an interesting site”


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/omega-ceti/
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Oolong  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Coming soon...
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Operation Omega Blast  (Demo)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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(google translate, sorry) :


Operation Omega Blast
=====================

Frutty land is in danger! The evil A.C.E. (Anti-CPC Empire) has set out to destroy Frutty Land. The only thing that still stands between peace and destruction is strategic skill and risk-tolerance of the player.

Aim of the game:
================

Goal of the game is to protect Frutty land and the evil A.C.E. to destroy. For this, the player must fly through space, collect frutties, purchase materials and equipment, build battle stations to defend, and destroy enemy stations.

The opponent will try to send spaceships against the player and build additional combat stations in space. The game is almost circularly structured: whenever the player is on the road for a longer time, For example, a hyperspace jump, the opponent moves his characters further.

groupings:
==============

In space, there are several scattered groups that can be friendly but also hostile to the player.

- Frutty Land
This is the home of the player.

- Daybyterian:
The Daybyterians, a peaceful and helpful folk, are experts in the field of electronics.

- Data Country:
Dataland's residents have developed special drives for space ships that allow them to fly not only fast but also into the drill lines to travel far and cheaply through space.

- Clausania:
Residents of Clausania are known for their good hearing. With the help of their complex sonar-sensory algorithms, they can navigate spaceships through space and analyze sky bodies from afar.

- Ro Land
Rumors about this country indicate that the population has been able to produce almost impenetrable protective shields with the help of highly compressed light.

- Cold Shiver
The inhabitants of this empire originally came from cold waters, and so they learned very early to deal with fire. Nowadays they are to be masters of lasers.

Seraik
The Seraics are a loose union of pirates. When dealing with them, extreme caution is required, but the contact might be worthwhile, because a real sera can teach you so many trick. Supposedly, the seraists have found a way to build bombs that are so small that they can be carried along in a space ship.

Space stations:
==============

On space stations the offer exists to trade with goods and acquire new equipment. They are found in various sectors and frequently, but not only, in solar systems. There are four different station types:

- Trading station
Here goods of various nature are changed.

- Collectors
Collectors collect the raw materials in the sector, which they find in suns, planets or asteroids.

- factories
Factories produce new equipment, provided there is enough material on board the station. If the player wants to acquire a special equipment, it is therefore necessary to have sold the necessary materials to the factory beforehand.

- Combat stations
Fighting stations serve the defense. To make them a big bow.

Some goods:
=============

Heliotropanites:
Heliotropanite is the fuel for hyper-space propulsion. You should always carry enough of it with you. Since most of the energy in the hyperspace jump is used to generate the hyperspace bubble, a ton is required for each jump no matter how far. A ton of heliotropanite is enough for a hyperspace jump with a range of up to 8 light years.

- Aluminum
Aluminum is used as a basic material for spacecraft construction and other light equipment.

- Endurium:
This all-purpose material is used in the construction of various equipment.

- Enthusium:
A colorful, iridescent fabric made of a mixture of dark energy and dark matter only to be found in the depths of space. It was named after Professor Enthusi, the famous 21st century astrophysicist and discoverer of dark matter.

- Paralaxium:
A radioactive element, a. in shield generators.

- Adamantium:
This particularly hard metallic alloy is required for the construction of space stations.

equipment:
=============

The vessel can be equipped with various additional equipment, as long as there is sufficient free space. For each equipment, the type and the make are given. The make-up determines the power and the energy consumption of the equipment.

- Power Cell
The Power Cell is the heart of the spaceship, which supplies them all the other elements with the necessary energy. If the shield is no longer charged fast enough or the jump drive stutter, it is time to replace the old PowerCell with a more powerful one.

- Protective shield
Shields provide the only protection of the spacecraft as they are capable of absorbing or deflecting energy from various particles that would otherwise bore a destructive hole in the shell of the space ship. However, their protection is limited and can not resist either a collision with a space station or the intense heat of a sun or the high atmospheric pressure of a planet. Sometimes, however, it is imperative that the protective shield be temporarily switched off, For example when sending and collecting a sample. To switch off and on, press the <S> key.

Laser
The stronger, the more stupid.

- Navcomputer
The Navcomputer helps you fly through space. He is able to steer a station independently and dock there. But beware! As a pilot you are obliged to keep your hands on the control console. No liability is assumed for possible collisions with planets or spaceships.

- sample
A sample can be used to take a sample of a sun, a planet or asteroid. Important substances for the construction of special equipment are found only in scattered systems. Care must be taken to ensure that at least one tonne has to be free from the filling volume in the cargo compartment. In addition, the protective shield must be deactivated during the transmission of the sample.

- Drilldrive
The Drilldrive allows the dive into the drillstream to bridge larger distances with the aid of a fluctuating shield frequency phase modulation compensation. For this purpose, however, the protective shield must be 100% full. Caution: The direction in which a drillstream flows is not directly visible from outside. In addition, you should not rely on the fact that at the end of the stream there is another drillstream that can bring you back. Drill streams are always one-way streets.

Control:
==========

In order to steer the space ship, a joystick is required in port 2.

The following keys are also available:

<+> Increase the speed
<-> Reduce speed
<J> Enables the jump mode, an accelerated trip through the solar system.
<N> Turn on / off the nav computer
<T> Changes the destination for the nav computer
<S> Switch shield generator on / off
<P> Send out a probe (only possible in the vicinity of planets or suns and with the protective screen switched off)
<H> Enable hyperspace. First, a target must have been selected on the local map,
<B> Activate the bomb

During the flight:
<1> View to the front.
<2> "" behind.
<3> "" on the left.
<4> "" on the right.

Docked to a space station:
<1> Departures
<2> Buying goods
<3> Sell goods
<4> Output last messages on the activities of other groups.

General:
<5> Show map of the galaxy. The area marked red corresponds to the size of the local map.
<6> Show local map
The map section can be moved using the arrow keys.
The <o> (= Origin) button sets the center of the map to the current sector.
Pressing the <6> key again displays the distribution of the groupings for the map cutout.
<7> Show sector information about the sector selected in the local map
<9> View equipment
<0> Display load

Game Start:
===========

At the beginning of the game, the player can choose between a standard game in a given universe or a random starting position. The space ship is initially minimalist, and the player has 100 frutties to purchase additional goods.

To the game:
==========

Unfortunately, this version is only an incomplete beta version. Originally the program was developed on the CPC. The port on the C64 was more difficult than planned, so that many parts of the game could not be finally implemented or activated.
For example, a. the following bugs or gaps:
- No sound during the game.
- In factories you can not buy any equipment and no separate material in the collectors.
- The menu for sale (actually button <3>) is not yet available (as of 5.12.2016)
- Enemy space ships or stations do not attack.
- No laser fire possible yet.
- Bomb to destroy stations is installed, but can not be activated.
- The same applies to other marine equipment.
- No "Game Over" display.
- God mode in collisions with stations or spaceships.
Despite intensive work on the project, it was no longer possible to add the missing components until the delivery date, as the program had to be redesigned. This program can only be something like a nightly build of a WIP, various bugs included.

The technique behind the game:
=============================
- For the program, new 3d routines have been developed to ensure a still acceptable image rate despite the use of filled polygons as well as double buffering to suppress the flicker.
- In order to ensure porting, much of the game has been developed in its own new language, which is compiled into a bytecode for the C64 and then executed by an interpreter.
- The game is prepared to take advantage of the acceleration capabilities of the C128, C64 DTV, SuperCPU and TC64.
- Later versions will also be loaded by kernel. This has already been applied during development, but could not be included in the delivery for reasons of time
*

*

Orcus  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1989 Electronic Zoo
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Mike Ager
Graphics: Haydn Dalton
Sound: JCH

Electronic Zoo never produced much decent stuff on the C64, but that was to change with the stunning ‘Orcus’.

A sideways scrolling shoot-em up which featured a shop with 29 (!) different add-ons on offer. Haydn Dalton informed GTW that the game also featured over 5,000 sprites altogether and many levels of awesome graphics.

JCH supplied the music, an incredible array of tunes, some of which sound almost human like. Luckily these slipped into HVSC, and are available from here to listen to in a suitable SID player.

So basically the game featured the full works and playability to kick Armalyte’s butt, and judging by the preview, it had it in it to do so.

Mike Ager contacted GTW and told us that the game was never completed due to him, Haydn and JCH not being paid, and the tight deadlines included.

In the meantime, Jazzcat has uncovered a very rare and much more advanced preview of level one. Infact, level one is stated to be 90% complete in this DCS crack (See a pattern here?). This is a superb look at the game, which gives a much better indication of how it was shaping up. There are colour splits, sfx, more enemies and sophisticated attack patterns. Check it out!

Interestingly enough, all the previews we have were cracked by Donut Cracking Service. It seems that Haydn passed on previews to a guy called Micheal (Mik) Bailey, who MAY have more of the game. Haydn believes he passed a much fuller version onto him… so could there be a more complete DCS crack out there?

Hopefully soon we will be able to bring you ORCUS in its final state, which many C64 users have been wanting to get hold of for years.  For now, you can play some early previews of the game, with some basic attack forms and early previews of the main game’s shop.

As an additional bonus, Jazzcat has uncovered some rare music and SFX demos done by JCH. Although the music is already in HVSC, the SFX is not!… and there is a bundle of SFX which has not been used in the game and are quite unheard of. This includes a very cool GET READY and GAME OVER set of effects which sound like speech, but have been cleverly generated using the 3 SID voices. Enjoy!

Unfortunately Mike Ager has never responded to any of our messages regarding the game, so we are left to just leave this message to Mike (in case he ever comes across these pages):

“Dear Mike – it would be an honour to preserve your work as part of our preserving our UK games history. Already we have gone to great lengths to try and preserve your work, by recovering all of the demos of Orcus and the graphical assets for Mega Twins – but we’ve hit a point where we have found as much as we possibly can.

Unfortunately many games are being lost all the time, due to there being no concern over this aspect of history in comparison to the film and music industry – and all of what we do now to preserve the history of gaming is in our limited spare time. Already we’ve started having trouble preserving particular tapes or disks as they start to decay, so try as much as we can to ensure as much of our gaming history will be available to future generations.

We can’t save everything, but your C64 work is highly regarded by many and it would be brilliant to see what remains of Orcus and Mega Twins that you were developing at the time – maybe even see them finished off! Certainly what with the Amstrad and Spectrum Mega Twins being recovered in recent years, it seems a shame the C64 version can’t be found as well, especially before the media it sits on deteriorates for good.”

Will the game ever be fully recovered?

Contributions: Mike Ager, Phil Davis, Jazzcat, Kenz, GRG


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/orcus/
*

*

Out Run II  (demo)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1988 Video Images
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Dirk Lee
Graphics: Dean Hickingbottom
Sound: N/A

An intriguing title next up, which we are as of yet unsure if it was intended as an official conversion pitch attempt or was something unofficial to demonstrate the credentials of Video Images.

Two loading screen variants were created, but also a quick demo showing a road routine effect, with controllable car.

Dean tells us that the game was a Porsche demo dating back to 1988 at Video Images, where they were attempting to get someone interested in an idea they had for Outrun 2. Dean did the graphics and the coder was a guy called Dirk Lee.

The idea was to have the game set around all of Europe, taking in various famous landmarks. The potential customer (US Gold?) dismissed it all and wasn’t interested, but then some months later, Outrun Europa surfaced. Co-incidental? Perhaps, but Video Images didn’t think so at the time.
Dean suggests they should have just done their own racing game.

So was this the beginnings of Outrun Europe that Neil Coxhead once started and also was never released? Who knows, but yet another piece of history preserved.

Contributions: Dean Hickingbottom


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/outrun-2/
*

*

Outbreak  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Dr. Mario clone.
*

*

Outrage  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1992 Cosmos
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Bernd Buchegger
Graphics: Bernd Buchegger
Sound: Karl Sommer
Other: Steve Day (Loading screen)

An exclusive look at another Cosmos Designs title you may not have heard about before.

This is another fantastic looking Cosmos Designs game which has sadly never seen the light of day.

I do not know much about the game, but it seems very similiar to Zamara, and featuring a very similiar kind of graphical scenario and status bar. We will hopefully find out soon what the game was about.

The game was almost completed, but sadly never released due
to troubles with publishers in 1993.

Some guys on the C64 scene managed to find the old disks and get as much together as possible for Bernd. This means that possibly Bernd could finish off the game quickly and release it, but details are sketchy at the moment.

GTW will soon be speaking to Bernd aboout his game, and what his plans are. Hopefully we may be seeing this game removed from GTW, and actually released. Time will tell.  It seems that the plan for the game is to be finished off and released by Psytronik.   We have recently added the loading screen done by STE’86 (see downloads and gallery).   We hope very much that the very promising game does get finished!

In the meantime, both Niels and IaN CooG contacted GTW to let us know that two music demos for the game had been leaked, and which we have now added for you to download! … Additionally, Ian has very kindly provided us with the ripped SID files which will be going into the next HVSC update (Many thanks!)

Yet another Cosmos Designs stunner that could be coming our way very soon!

Contributions: Arnold Blueml, IaN CooG, Niels


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/outrage/
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Pac-It  (Preview V2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
*

*

Pac-Man Arcade  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Although Pac-Man was actually released for the C64 in 1983, this version has much higher detail, a cool soundtrack and even the original characters down each side.

Unlike the original game however with the collecting of pac-dots and specials to eat ghosts, in this version you can only move back and forth and the ghosts don't move, as this is an early alpha preview. But for what it's worth as an early alpha, this arcade port has a lot of potential.


http://www.indieretronews.com/2015/02/pac-man-arcade-hokuto-force-releases.html
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Parsec Ten  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Uridium clone as it seems.
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Penguin Tower  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Penguin Tower V2
199? Ewen Gillies

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Ewen Gillies
Graphics: Ewen Gillies, Jan Hirvo and Kevin Tilley
Sound: Andrew Fisher

Indeed, there was another version of Penguin Towers in production, by non other than Ewen Gillies.

After the non-appearance of the original game by Jani Hirvo, Ewen was very disapointed and decided to create and finish off the original game for people to play, though project work stopped at one point. Ewen had started the whole game from scratch, using the graphics from the original.

While in conversation with Wayne Wormersley of Art Ravers, Wayne found out that Ewen had this game that was in production, but he needed a muscian. Wayne, a big fan of Andrew Fisher’s music, got them both in contact, and a co-op version of the game was to be produced.

Andrew created a series of jolly tunes for the game (Which are currently in HVSC), but sadly Ewen only really completed a few previews before stopping work to move away from the C64 scene for good.

Ewen also got Kevin Tilley involved, and asked Kevin to design all the levels and some additional bits for the game. Kevin did so, though Ewen never got to see the designs, and Ewen disapearred and scrapped the game due to PC commitments.

The game was very near complete, and what with Kevin’s level designs and Andrew’s music.. this could be a almost complete Penguin Towers game. It JUST needs to be bolted together really. The game played very fair to the original title by Jan Hirvo (It’s not known if Jan knew about this conversion).

The preview still exists, and now thanks to Ewen and Andrew, they can now be downloaded. Basically the zip file consists of the preview itself, all the SID music that Andrew composed, a Level editor for the preview and some level maps. Hopefully one day I will be able to present a more complete version with title screen and the music integrated.

This is an accurate version of Penguin Towers, and you may be surprised. What with the Level Editor being present, the potential of finally seeing Penguin Towers on the C64 in some form is a reality.

A case closed once more for GTW, and a succesful one at that.

First it was sheep, and now Penguins have been cloned…

Contributions: Wayne Wormersley, Andrew Fisher, Kevin Tilley, Ewen Gillies

---

Ewen Gillies speaks to GTW about ''Penguin Towers v2'...

"Penguin Towers. Even to this day it's like "ooooh no, not that <Censored> thing again!".

----cut----

Basicaly my little brother (Lucky) showed it to me, he simply LOVED it. Of course he was disappointed that it was never released. From my point of view, it was quite a good conversion and it could work on the C64.

So, to avoid any copyright problems, I actually started to rewrite portions of the code so the original author couldn't moan about me stealing his code (there was also a few parts that would work better recoded). I spent most of one day printing off the source to it, along with the masses of tables used.

Andrew Fisher was kind enough to port over a lot of routines to the PC for me, including the game. So, out with the old C64Diasm and into MSWord with it (of all things to use !). Okay - not very honest, but I recognised at the time there was a lot of people feeling REALLY let down at the time - Lucky and me included - that there was no final version.

As you can see, I left a lot of the original artwork in the preview thats out along with a few levels that me & Lucky made using the editor (that editor was merely a "quick and dirty" method for making the levels. I was toying with the idea of allowing people to create thier own levels). I was hoping to also include some "inter-level" levels just to keep it from the mundane "play through 100 levels".

To cut a long story short. I got involved in the PC quite heavily - mainly on the "security" side as well as a full time job that was _VERY_ demanding, the C64 scene just seemed to "slip away" in it's level of importance.

There was a working title screen and highscore screen (with a nice little cheatsystem built into it) - although I lost a lot of my PC 64 things and only have whats on that site, although my 64 floppies are still somewhere in England.

Maybe one day I will get around to finishing that game just for the hell of it - it seems to keep comming back and haunting me !
 ----cut----"


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/penguin-tower-v2/
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PenPalz (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Pen Palz
1997 John Pericos and Nathan Perry

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: John Pericos
Graphics: Nathan Perry
Sound: Sidchip Scratchers

PenPalz was a neat little game that was being developed back in Jan 1997 by John Pericos and Nathan Perry – intended for GO64.

The idea is simple – draw on the screen as much as you can and try to fill in a certain percentage of the screen before time runs out. Sort of like Qix in many ways – and with the same problem of having creatures on the screen which are trying to stop you. Collecting the bonus colour blocks on the screen are there to make your life far easier.

Although the game got to a promising early stage (with titles, music and at least a level) – unfortunately the game was never finished due to both developers getting tied up and busy at University. After that, the game was shelved and forgotten about, and John went onto developing for the GameBoy.

In early 2012, John got in touch with GTW64 and offered the game to us. He had been cleaning up stuff in his old room at his parent’s house and found a bunch of disks – one of which had the last version of PenPalz. To ensure it got preserved and share it with others, John kindly passed on a copy of the game to put on the website. And here it is!

The game is fully playable, and contains one level for you to try. This is as far as the game got before it was shelved. The download also includes a text file which explains more about how to play the game.

John offers hope that maybe one day he may even complete the game – however, John lost contact with Nathan Perry and hopes that maybe this entry will get Nathan in touch again to maybe get this project moving again. If you’re out there Nathan, then please get in touch!

For now, check out this superb preview of a very promising game!

Contributions: John Pericos


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/pen-palz/
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Phantasm  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
*

*

Pinball Dreams  (Preview 2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Coming soon!
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Playboy - The Game  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1987 Radarsoft
Status: Preview, Findability: 1/5

Coding: John Vanderaart
Graphics: Wijo Koek
Sound: Jeroen Kimmel


An interesting game based on the Playboy magazine, which was being developed by Wijo Koek and John Vanderaart for Radarsoft back in 1987.

The game was believed to have been a kind of business simulator, where you must try and get a very beautiful and ambitious bunny girl onto the centerfold of Playboy.  A game described as one which combines skill with style.

Sadly the game was never completed – though a demo was released with music by Jeroen Kimmel and has been doing the rounds for some time.  It looks pretty good overall.

This is all we currently know about the game, though sadly John is believed not to have kept any of his work.  Possibly Wijo Koek may know more or have some more of the game, but we’ll have to watch this space!

Try pressing F8 in the meantime ;-)


Contributions: Paul Koller, Dottyflowers




http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/playboy-the-game/
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Populous  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1991 Electronic Arts
Status: No Download, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Frank Hugenroth, André Hugenroth
Graphics: Frank Hugenroth, André Hugenroth, Frank Schlueter
Sound: N/A

64’er had stated that the magazine received a demo-disk which included a demo of a c64-version of the god-sim Populous by Peter Molyneux.

The demo-disk included the first graphics and routines for this game, indicating that the scan shots were in fact real.

The last thing the magazine stated is that they will try to contact the programming team and give them some-sort of legal protection (“Schutzenhilfe”), and follow the development of the game.

It wasn’t known how things went with the game, and if 64’er got hold of the game. It looks unlikely due to nothing being released, but all we have for now is the C64 screenshots from the magazine.

Zeldin informed GTW that the guys who made the early screens, did the game “Boom”. After the unsuccessful launch of “Boom”, they sent Zeldin and his crew all their started projects and said: “Finish it if you want!”. On those disks were the “Populous” graphics, and also the source codes.

Former AWT members should know more about what has happened to the disks. The leading squad of the “Airwolf Team” is nowadays also part of “Protovision”.  Therefore it’s a case of trying to contact people who used to be part of AWT, and even now Protovision. What has happened to the sources of this wonderful preview?

Coder, Frank Hugenroth, got in touch with GTW64 in 2015 and confirmed that it was created more as a technical demo for the C64 and was contributed initially as a contribution to an animation/GFX competition.   However, even though 64’er suggested that they had tried to contact the developers, Frank says they never tried even though they knew the developers.

Frank mentioned that they pitched a potential conversion to EA Germany, but they sadly declined.   In the end, the demo initially created was done just for fun, but has a working grid of 64×64 and can be scrolled.  It’s suggested that after EA’s rejection, they did think about using the technique with another game – but it was never to be.  We hope that Frank may have something of the demo!

Well, one of the AWT members – LightSide came to the rescue of GTW64 and has supplied us with the disk which Frank and Andre originally had sent over.  Which includes the source code.  This includes an interactive title page and a map which can be moved around rather impressively.  There is also a tune separately which was not integrated, and is pretty impressive.

Frank has given full permission also for the source code to be released.  The source code is credited to both Frank and Andre.  It is released under the Creative Commons license Attribution as detailed by Frank:

“This material is licensed under the Creative Commons license Attribution – Noncommercial – Share Alike 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.”

Separate from this version of Populous, we can confirm that the C64 version was in the pipeline!… Paul Hughes had the following to say…

“Its only a tidbit – I’m not sure how far that version of Populous actually went, but when I was in first talks with Pete and Les at Bullfrog about Flood 2 – they asked me (circa 1991) if I’d be interested in doing a 64 conversion of Pete’s Populous (having just left Ocean and having a raft of 64 routines still fresh in my mind).

As I got more and more “into” flood 2 and pushing the Atari ST, the thoughts of doing more 64 work where the furthest from my mind. I don’t think they ever got much further, and just afterwards they did a massive selling Megadrive port of Populous and it all fizzled away.”

So did they get someone else to do the port?… Is this the port?…. More info needed, but a very interesting snippet of information there…

But for now, check out what could have been the real deal had EA Germany signed it up!  A massive shame it never got further, but so glad it has been fully saved!

Contributions: Zeldin, Paul Koller, Paul Hughes, Frank Hugenroth, LightSide


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/populous/
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Portal  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Portal
1995 Visualize

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Phil Nicolson
Graphics: Phil Nicolson
Sound: Chris Lightfoot

Phil Nicolson was one of the hero’s of the C64 with his last ditch efforts to insert some new software into the C64 scene in the mid 90′s, as Commodore Format was walking into the sunset.

He did some nice titles, such as Deadline and Tracer for Visualise Software, and even took over the software company as Jon Wells moved onto his Supportware scheme.

On purchasing Deadline from Visualise all those years ago (A brilliant purchse at £3), I found an additional preview called "Portal"… A clone of the Simon Pick game "Revolution" (Check CF Powerpack 1)

Although in the early stages, with sprites ripped from Deadline for testing purposes, the game actually looked and played reasonably well. Could this have gone one better over "Revolution"?

Sadly, this was all that was ever seen of the game, even though a release was planned in the next few months. Phil moved away from the C64 scene, quite likely after poor sales, which many suffered with at the time.

Portal was shelved, though at what stage in its life we don’t know. There is likely to be a later version, quite possibly with its own sprites and some titles. Hopefully either Phil or Jon Wells could shed some light on this game in the near future.

At least you have "Revolution" for consolation for this loss…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/portal/
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Power Gate  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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*

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Princess of the Dark  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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*

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Prizone  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Prizone
1988 CRL

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Juha Kaki
Graphics: Jukka Kaatinen
Sound: Jukka Kaatinen, Juha Kaki

This interesting game is best described as a Uridium style shoot’em’up and was to be published by CRL in 1988 but the game company went bankrupt.

The preview features some nice music and graphics, and i’m sure it would have recieved fair reviews in the magazines had CRL lasted long enough to sell the game.

Well, Jukka has released it at long last to the public…. and its a great classic feeling game. I just hope that Jukka can find the full game from somewhere, if it was ever finished.

For now, read what Jukka had to say about the game he did the graphics for in ‘Creator Speaks’.

Unfortunately not snapped up by another game’s company.

Contributions: Juha Kaki, Olli


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/prizone/
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Proteus  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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1986 Firebird
Status: Full Game, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Michael Ware
Graphics: Michael Ware
Sound: Rob Hubbard

A very big thanks to Mauricio Muñoz Lucero for highlighting this one for us. Proteus is basically Warhawk V1 which has recently surfaced thanks to the author of Warhawk digging out his unreleased software whilst he develops the new Warhawk game on the DS. We think its probably sneaked out already, as Rob’s tune is already in HVSC which is slightly different to the final Warhawk tune.

The game is basically exactly the same game (With minor differences), but was a beta version sent to Firebird before the final name was chosen. Proteus is the name of the team behind Warhawk.

There is little else to say, as eventually it did get a proper release, but this prototype version is still worthy of an entry.

It is great to preserve this earlier version if it hasn’t been already. Check out a piece of what was to be Warhawk…

Case closed!…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/proteus/
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Protocol  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
This was a bi-directional SEU with some nice graphics by Simon Probert (Simes of Cosine, currently in Australia) and code by Jason Kelk with no sound, although Simon was to do this.

The game progressed from some early code by Jason, whom is most famous for his work now with Cosine, and his Reaxion games.

The game was being developed for Firebird and their budget range, after someone at the company showed interest after seeing the previews they sent.

When a more complete preview was sent up, Firebird were not really interested and wanted games with BMX and Skateboards. Firebird suggested various changes to the game, and Jason didn’t want to make these changes. He felt the game would distance too much away from what he really wanted.

The game itself is quite good, and something which would have faired well on the budget range. It was a little hard to play, and probably needs a lot more, but Jason i’m sure would have had the ability to do so with the final version.

This is it of the game, and case closed. All you will see of a game which Firebird wanted to change too much for Jason’s liking.

Jason gives an account in his own words in Creator Speaks, extracted from his webpage, where he first released this game.

Grab it and check out a piece of Firebird history…

Contributions: Jason Kelk, Andre for bug fix

---

Jason Kelk speaks about work on Protocol...
Extracted from TMR's webpage...

"This is probably the best of the unreleased bunch, Protocol was progressed from the source of Orbyt with the addition of upper and lower border removal, bi-directional parallax scrolling and a far more solid game concept.

It was originally being developed for Firebird (for the budget range) by myself and Simes after someone there showed an initial interest in the previews we sent. But when I traipsed up there to show them the more complete preview, the most we got out of them was "can you do anything with a BMX or a skateboard?"

S'a bit sad really, everybody wanted to add guns and stuff to it but I liked the whole alternative weapon idea too much to ruin it... The sky is red because we were both Status Quo fans. This preview has been patched and cleaned a little, to make it up to the version we showed Firebird."

Jason Kelk.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/protocol/
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Proxima  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Coming soon...
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Pulse  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Pulse
1990 David Green

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: David Green
Graphics: David Green
Sound: David Green

David Green is probably more well known for his music that he composed for the likes of Boing and also Reckless Rufus for Mike "Kernal" Berry. But it seems that David also did a bit of coding too, and so Pulse became a bit of a surprise entry for GTW when Mike mailed us a copy of the game.

Think "Citadel" mixed with "Tom Thumb" from the Oink game, and you pretty much sum up Pulse, which is a great little puzzler. Unfortunately though you will only get challenged for about 2 levels, as the game is incomplete. Although the titles, music and game mechanics all seem to be here, the only thing really missing are levels. Once you get past level 2, things become increasing sparse and then eventually you’ll get stuck on a later level which has no exit.

However, some may not ever get off level 1, as it is rock hard!…. Certainly i’m sure that the game had it been finished would have had its difficulty levels tweaked slightly, and the high difficultly level is a result of the game being unfinished.

We’re not sure exactly why the game never got completed or released by anyone, but we assume that David tried to find someone to publish the game but didn’t have any luck. Possibly David (or Mike) will confirm in the future about what happened to this game. But overall this seems to be it, no more to find of this one!

Thanks to Slator for the tidyups made in the additional copy of the preview which we’ve also added!

Enjoy this great little preview, and hopefully we’ll find out more about the game itself soon!

Contributions: Mike (Kernal Berry, Slator


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/pulse/
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Push over  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Push-Over  (Preview V2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Q-Bert’s Qubes  (preview)
Alternative title: Q-Bert 2
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1984 Parker Brothers
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Robin Ballweg
Sound: Unknown

Another title which should have been added to the GTW archives a very long time ago, after evidence of a C64 conversion was found in a manual of a released version of the game.

Q*Bert’s Qubes was a sequel to the highly popular Q*Bert arcade, but never shared the same levels of success as its predecessor. It complicated things maybe a bit too much by having the ability to rotate cubes in multiple directions to make a line in a colour set by the level.

Parker Brothers no doubt felt the game would still sell on the strength of the original, and planned conversions to most popular home platforms. The C64 version would never surface though, possibly due to the games division going under before it could see release.

In 2017, Scott Stilphen got in touch to pass on some games to the GTW archive – one of which included a preserved disk from artist Robin Ballweg, who turns out was the artist on the C64 conversion. On one of her disks was an executable preview of the game, showing something mostly playable. This was being produced for James Wickstead Design Associates for Parker Brothers during 1984.

It is a wonderful finding of a game that we were never sure actually existed. Here it is, and it is mostly playable and shows a solid conversion taking place. Maybe some day a more complete version could be found?

Contributions: Robin Ballweg, Scott Stilphen


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/qberts-qubes/
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Quantarallax   (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1989 Quantum Designs
Status: No Download, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Shane Mussell
Graphics: Richard Hawkins, Robin Levy
Sound: Jeroen Tel, Ian Crabtree

An interesting game demo finding on Ashley Routledge’s disks recently came in the shape of Quantarallax, which is an early Delta sort of clone that never seemed to get released.

The game was developed by Quantum Designs, who consisted of Richard (Froodle) Hawkins and Shane (Chain) Mussell for this particular project.   We are not sure if it was intended to try and get a publisher.

It probably ended up with Ash and Dave, as Richard was from the Eastbourne area where Ash and Dave were based at the time, and used to speak to them a lot.

This preview also seems to be very early and just allows you to shoot loads of ships and not much else.   Did it ever get much further than this?

We hope to hear from both Richard and Shane soon about the game, so watch this space!  For now, here is the demo that was found.

Contributions: Ashley Routledge


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/quantarallax/
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R-Type V1  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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R-Type V1
1987 Electric Dreams

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: David Jolliff, James Smart
Graphics: Mark Jones
Sound: Barry Leitch, Robert MCGawan

The famous sideways scroller R-Type was infact released on the C64 by Electric Dreams…. but a different version to what was originally planned and was being worked on….. CVG magazine gave away a demo tape for all readers, which contained a early look at the game conversion of the popular arcade… and it was rather good too….

There was a whole different set of programmers working on this game, compared with the version that was created by Manfred Trenz.

What is quite amusing, is that of the time of this game…. Manfred Trenz had completed Katakis, which was banned because of Activision taking out a law suit saying that Katakis was too close to their R-Type licence…. And look who they eventually signed to do the official conversion!

I didn’t like the version which was released…. it feels rough and shoddy… not even as good as the superior Master System version. The demo from CVG may have been early… but it felt so much better and closer to the arcade. If Electric Dreams had stuck with the original crew working on the game, they may have well had a first class shoot-em-up which would be high in the ranks of C64 gaming today.

Zeldin stumbled over a review for R-Type, which was in the issue 12/88 (it came out in november), shots from the version 1 of the game. Reading the review made it clear that the reviewers already had a fully playable game. They already gave a ‘hit’-star for it!. The game recieved great praise and was told to have great music. There is no proof that this means it was complete, as ASM were apparently renound for reviewing incomplete games.

Recently, a big find was made by Glenn Rune Gallefoss, when he remembered that he had most of the original game which he was given by the creators themselves.

Shockingly, most of the game is here and almost all the levels are now present in preview form, although in a very early stage in some cases. This pushes past the one level preview that was only in existance. Now you can check the game out for yourself what we have so far. In addition to Glenn’s findings, Jazzcat has passed on a Phoenix and Conquest crack which contains yet another level. In total there are about 6 levels, but level 3 is missing with the large ship guardian!… Maybe this was never started?…. We hope that this may be uncovered at some point!

One bad thing to say is that the colours are all wrong, and there is a lack of them throughout. There is still no sound in the game. But there is something very exciting even more so recently…

…. Barry Leitch, who created the music for the game, recently dug out all the tunes created for the game (Which were never included with the levels). They have currently been donated to HVSC and have never been heard before.

Also talking recently to Barry at BIT5 Brighton, it was found that Version 1 was scrapped as the programmers were taking too long working on the game. Meanwhile, even after all the controversy of Katakis, Activision were so impressed with the work on this game, they hired Manfred’s team to finish off the game in a few weeks. Version 1 was scrapped, which was deemed a little too slow and not quite working out as they wanted. Apparently the programmer was having all sorts of problems trying to get the game running smoothly. As you can see from the previews, the game does run a little slower.

It’s not quite known if an even later version exists, as you could quite safely say that what we have here is all that remains of the game. Hopefully one day soon we may be able to present you a version of the levels with all of Barry’s music, as intended.

A shame… the original version is superior in certain ways…

Contributions: Zeldin, Deev, GRG/Blues Muz, Barry Leitch, Jazzcat


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/rtype-v1/
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R.I.O.T.  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Commodore 64 game releases are coming in thick and fast at the moment... And here's another. This is R.I.O.T. A new game currently in development, and cracked by Laxity.  You get to try 4 levels of a game before it's finished. You can also try the preview with infinite energy thanks to the trainer.

This is a side scrolling action game where you explore levels by running left and right, climbing ladders and finding lifts to other floors. There is a sub game available by pressing F3, which is a kind of bat and ball game, but why it's necessary isn't too clear at the moment.  You can also switch between melee and laser gun to kill the flying aliens.

The graphics are on the poor side and the controls definitely need to be improved.  Firing and moving around feels unresponsive and awkward. I did like the enemy sprites though, blinking menacingly as they hover towards you. But they just fly left or right, and take down a bit of your energy if they hit you, if you forgot to fire at them. I wasn't sure either how to complete a level, or if it's even possible, but you can try other levels from the level select screen.

There's clearly a lot of work to be done here, but why not download the preview and try it for yourself?   - Article by Hayesmaker


http://www.indieretronews.com/2016/04/riot-preview-c64-early-access-by-laxity.html
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Race with the Devil  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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*
1986 Protocol Productions
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Harri Palviainen
Graphics: Harri Palviainen
Sound: Harri Palviainen

Our next entry in the database is thanks to contributor Asphodel, who has flagged up a title which is 30 years old this year and one that we haven’t yet added to the archives.

Race with the Devil is a scrolling platform game, similar in some ways to Blagger.  It is very tough to play, and a demo was given we believe to Floppy Magazine 64 in 1986.

The final game was never to appear though for some reason, and Harri didn’t seem to do any other games after that point.  So what happened to the game?  Did Harri get bored and move onto other projects?

We hope to find Harri to find out more and confirm what happened to game.  Maybe there is a full version that exists somewhere?

Contributions: Asphodel, Gamebase 64


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/race-with-the-devil/
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Rainbow Bomber  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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*
Rainbow Bomber
199? Unknown

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

A very colourful single screen platform game. "Rainbow Bomber" certainly lives up to its name.

Apart from the annoying colour scroll as you move, the game seems to be fairly playable at its current stage, though some jumps are hard to make and avoiding the enemies in time is quite difficult in some parts.

Graphically, apart from the colour, the actual graphics are quite simple. The colour merely covers this up slightly.

The game is quite similiar to "Bubble Bobble" and "Twin Terrors", though not quite as advanced as these games.

Hopefully there is a more complete version out there which offers a bit more than this preview. Sadly, no credits, so hard hunting ahead.

Bubble Bobble on pot….
\

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/rainbow-bomber/
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Recon  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1986 Mastertronic
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Ian Jones, Michael Jones
Graphics: Ian Jones, Michael Jones, Michael Bareham
Sound: N/A

Recon is a sort of cross between Uridium and Paradroid, where you control a ship moving over a dreadnought horizontally – but not flying. The game was started in the hope of quickly pushing the demo around publishers to get interest.

It got to a fair stage of progress and was shaping up pretty well, though there is no sound at the moment.

It was started in 1986 by Ian and Michael Jones, but swiftly abandoned as Mastertronic sadly rejected the game.

The remains were passed onto Ikari to release back in 1988.

This is as far as the game got sadly, so it is a very quick open and closed case.

Contributions: Michael Jones


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/recon/
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Red Baron 3000  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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2007 Hein Holt
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Hein Holt
Graphics: Hein Holt
Sound: Hein Holt

Our next entry into the GTW archives is a very neat proof of concept that has unfortunately been cancelled, but looks very impressive indeed.

Red Baron 3000 is a vertically scrolling shooter, with some cool parallax effects and simultaneous music and sfx.  It was created by Hein Holt who was inspired by the parallax effects of Flimbos Quest and Hawkeye 2.

Originally planned to be a demo part, it expanded rapidly into a game, with enemy routines and collisions.

Work was halted when a major rework was required to try and free up more memory for the game as  whole, and also doing the artwork was found to be a slow and cumbersome process for Hein.   There was a brief reprieve for the game, when Hein got inspired by seeing Xenon 2, and was going to manually convert all of the assets to the c64, when interest was lost again.

Hein decided to close the door on the game, and now it has been released into GTW64 as a result.   A huge shame, as the game certainly looks and plays impressively, even at this early stage.

Contributions: Jazzcat

---

Hein Holt talks about the creation of his game:

“It started in 2007 as a proof of concept for a parallax routine to see how much can be optimised. I really liked the Flimbo’s Quest and Hawkeye (2) parallax. It turned out a full-screen parallax is doable. Originally I wanted to use it as a demo part for a big demo that was themed around underwater worlds.

Eventually I added a spaceship that could shoot it’s way through the background. Before I knew it a sprite multiplexer was added and work began on some sort of game engine. The game engine that’s in the preview contains a simple enemy movement system, a sound fx routine (which was my first bit of SID programming) and player / bonus control routines.

There it kinda stopped, since a lot of rework was needed to change the level set-up because of the scarce amount of free memory left. Doing the low priority background graphics is terribly cumbersome as well, so this kept me away from redoing the graphics. A brief burst of inspiration sparked when I played the Amiga version of Xenon 2 again. A port to C64 of that classic game was my revived goal.

I’ve collected most of the Xenon 2 assets and level layouts from the internet. And then I lost interest again. I guess I’ve become a terribly lazy pixel artist, wondering how on earth I could’ve spend so many hours on doing pixel graphics in the first place. Hats off to the die-hard people still doing that.

But programming the game was a nice learning experience nevertheless, with some good old vaporware as a result.”


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/results/freetext/red+baron/
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Reel Fishing  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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199? Protovision

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Markus Spiering
Graphics: Markus Spiering, Jakob Voos, Johan Janssen & Malte Mundt
Sound: GRG, Kent Patfield, Marceli Tobijasz (Lyon), GRG


Another former Cascade member started coding on a little game, which should have been a conversion of the Amiga game "Reel Fishing" a long time back. However, when a unofficial crack of ‘Turrican 3′ happened, this project was put on ice.

But once the dust settled, the game was brought back to life and in production for Protovision (Who produce new C64 software in 2000 and onwards). Progress seemingly was looking very good and the game shaping up well.

However, after some badness on the C64 scene, the developer became disollutioned and decided sadly to quit developing on the C64. You can read more about this in the note which is supplied with this preview… released in sad circumstances.

Everything you see here is pretty much what was left over when cancelled. There are probably bits and pieces of code, graphics and music unused which could be seen in the future, but we are assuming this is almost 100% of what was left.

The developer has decided to release all his work on the game out into the open so that the game gets some kind of recognition and reception rather than gather dust. It’s possible that maybe someone will offer to pick up the pieces of this game, but otherwise the developer states that the game will never be finished.

What with the decision to release, GTW has added the title to its archives and hopes to pay hommage to a title which looked as if it could have been rather nice. The preview shows very good promise of a fantastic conversion, with a playable area similiar to that of the ship sailing in Pirates. Some nice graphics are present throughout (although its stated that some are borrowed temporarily for the preview).

Additionally, Glenn Rune Gallefoss has kindly submitted to GTW all his SFX work which was mostly unused. This can be downloaded from the link above. And Marco has also submitted some previously unseen graphics which are in Amica format and are now part of the overall download and in the screenshots section.

Hopefully we may get a creator speaks page for this game from Markus to get his own story about the game and its development. For now, download and think of what could have been…

The beginnings of a fantastic conversion, sadly fading away…

Contributions: Zeldin, Glenn Rune Gallefoss, Marco, Peter Sandén



http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/reel-fishing/
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Rent-A-Cop Reloaded  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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2013 Achim Volkers
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Achim Volkers
Graphics: Achim Volkers
Sound: Anders Carlsson

I loved the original Rent-a-cop game when it was released in the 2012 RGCD games competition.   It was a brilliant tribute to Activision’s Keystone Capers game on the Atari VCS.

So when I heard about a new “reloaded” edition coming out, I was naturally quite excited.   This time only some of the Keystone Capers feel was to be kept, with the reloaded edition to feature more shooting/platform action… maybe not too different to Lethal Weapon on the C64?

James Monkman was giving input to the creator Achim Volkers, who suggested having different stages like harbour, storage depot, museum and more.    The Harbour level was done, with the AI almost complete.  Enemies weren’t quite shooting, but it wasn’t far away.

Work paused whilst Vice Squad was finished off, and then after starting Darkness and other titles – Achim lost interest and decided to sign off the project and release what was started.

It is a huge shame to have to add this very promising preview – but sometimes you have to ditch the things you don’t want to work on.  It is part and parcel of doing game development in limited time as a hobby on the C64 – you have to enjoy the game you’re working on :)   But here it is for you to check out!

Case closed!

Contributions: Jazzcat, Achim Volkers

---

Achim Volkers:

“The idea was to make Rent-A-Cop a platform shoot-em up.  James (rgcd) suggested different stages like harbour, storage depot, museum etc.  I only made graphics for the harbour. The parallax scolling was a bit of a gimmick: the scroll engine ran idle one frame, so I implemented the second layer.

The enemy AI was close to being finished. The only thing missing are enemies shooting
at the player.  After finishing The Vice Squad and already working on Darkness and one of my own games I lost interest in this project.”


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/rent-a-cop-reloaded/
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Retaliate  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Marcelo Cabral :

After developing remakes of classic 8bit games (Prince of Persia, Lode Runner, Donkey Kong) to the Roku platform (streaming box/TV OS) I decided to work the other way around, this time creating a version of one of the most successful games for Roku, the arcade-style space shooter game Retaliate to the Commodore 64 computer.
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Rigor  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Rigor
199? Nipson

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Rico/Nipson
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: ASL/Nipson

Thanks to Joerg for bringing this game to my attention, this is a game which Nipson were working on, and what an impressive looking game it is!

Featuring an excellent 3D tunnel effect, although limited, the game looks really stunning, with plenty of excellent graphics and 3D to make it look like a 3D0 game of somekind… I think the game i’m thinking of is Microcosm.

Unfortunatly its not too playable, too short and a bit of a pain to play at the moment.. but it looks the bees knees and could have been very special had it been finished.

Nipson may have decided that the project was too complicated and decided to pack it in. It was quite a hefty task, and without the ability of the tunnel to turn anywhere, it could have resulted in a boring game in nice packaging… Still, we don’t know that and there is more to find out about this game in the future.

There are some links, and we have been put in contact with ASL/Nipson, who will hopefully shed some more light on this title very soon. We will also be adding the HVSC music too for the game at a later stage.

But overall, we should soon find out how much further it got, and if we will ever see more of the game.

Similiar to Iridiron in some ways on the GBA….


Contributions: Joerg "Nafcom" Droege


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/rigor/
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RISK  (Demo)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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R.I.S.K early version

We are already currently aware of a very early version of RISK, which can be downloaded from here… http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=10980&d=18&h=0

However, the first issue of The Games Machine showed some preview shots of RISK, which have a slightly different panel, scanner position – but also what looks to be a set of graphics that may not be in the final game.

Well, in late 2013 we were very pleased to actually find a preview on Cory Kin’s disks which contained the graphics you can see in the screenshots.

It’s pretty early, with a earlier ship build and not really much game play in place.  But we also have added the very early build of the game where you just currently walk around on the ground, which depicts a very different game overall.  It seems the game went over some major evolutionary phase!


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2013/07/r-i-s-k-early-version/
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RISK  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Ritualist  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Juha-Pekka Jokela has created this game for the Global Game Jam that happened Jan 29-31-2017

It is a simple action game for Commodore 64 where you take a role of a priest, trying to survive in a haunted house by performing rituals to stop haunting.

To play, move priest around with the joystick. Whenever there’s ghost around you, find a spot where your character turns black and hold down mouse button. Then push the directions indicated by the God on your cross to perform a ritual to get rid of the ghost.

According to the developer, “the game is unfinished and buggy”, but the fact he added the source code, it is a good opportunity for someone to take over the interesting idea and finish the game, if Juha-Pekka doesn’t do it himself. Anyone?


http://www.vintageisthenewold.com/ritualist-game-preview-for-c64-with-source-code/
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Rocky Memphis  (Preview 2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Coming soon..
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Runestone  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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1985 Firebird

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Chris Yates
Graphics: Jon Hare, Simon Jay (?)
Sound: Unknown


A sort of "Lords of Midnight" type affair which got a release by Firebird on its "Hot Range" back in 1985, and in particular on the ZX Spectrum. A young Chris Yates and Jon Hare were just getting started in the game development world before Sensible Software was born, and they were contracted to do the conversion of this well recieved Spectrum game under a developer house called "LT Software". It was a game worked on for 13 weeks approximately before Sensible Software was set up.

The game is a graphic adventure that was coded originally by Alan Davis, and was produced also by Games Workshop. The game featured a technique called "Venturescope", whcih combined real-time action, a full text interpreter, multiple command input, deozens of independant characters and 8,000 views from over 2,000 locations. The spectrum entry for the game can be found with full reviews and scans.

The game conversion was completed and was quite successful, but sadly Firebird apparently complained that the game was too slow. Jon Hare/Chris Yates in an interview in Zzap 64 – issue 61, fought back by saying that it was actually the fault of Firebird’s loader (Was it really down to the loading speed of the game that cancelled it?). In the end the game never got released as a result.

Seems a shame that a completed conversion that pretty much did the business never saw the light of day. We need to find out a bit more background to what happened, but now we hope that we can try and uncover remains (or even the full conversion) to bring to GTW in the future.

However, in late 2011 – C64.com ported a series of disks from Darren Melboune, on one of the disks was a set of graphics by Lizard (Who I think was a relation of Stoat – his brother?) On the disk was a file called "Roonstone" which when loaded up, presented shockingly a C64 conversion of Runestone!
 We are unsure just how complete it is or if it is by the Sensible lads, but check this out and see for yourself! (Thanks to Slator for the fixed files)

Maybe this was a second conversion that failed and which followed Sensible’s version?

More to come on this game, but check it out! Yet another big Firebird game preserved!!

Contributions: Peter Weighill, Jon Hare, Darren Melbourne, C64.com, Slator




http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/runestone-2/
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Sally's Garden  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Genesis Project are on form this month as after previously releasing Lawless Legends an RPG proof of concept dungeon crawler for the C64, they then went ahead and released the first preview of ' Sally's Garden Preview +2 ' . Developed by Matthew Clarke, linked and trained by their new member Rhythm, this is your typical platformer whereby collection of vegetables and enemy avoidance is the overall aim of the game.

Currently in an early stage of progress, in Sally's Garden you play as a dark haired lady called Sally, and within a certain time frame must collect all the vegetables scattered throughout to complete the level. But not only do you have enemies such as birds and bunnies you need to jump over, there is also a number of collapsing paths that give the game just that extra challenge.

The core of the game is certainly there and it's easy to understand, the only problem being that it is a preview, with no intro screen, music or level beyond the first.


http://www.indieretronews.com/2016/09/sallys-garden-preview-early-in-dev-game.html
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Savage Platforms  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1996 Commodore Scene
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Mike Berry
Graphics: Mike Berry, Andrew Fisher
Sound: David Green

It’s 1996 and the game’s on the C64 are slowly drying up completely, the enthusiasm of creating new C64 games for mail order sale started to lose itself.

Fanzines were the only real hope in the UK of any progress for the C64 scene, and one magazine called Commodore Scene tried desperately to take the C64 forward even further. Part of its quest was aided by Mike Berry, whom decided to create a one final hurrah on the C64 in the form of Savage Platforms, a free game for the readers of Commodore Scene.

From what started out as initially a clone of the classic “Frantic Freddie”, the game evolved and blossomed into the weird and wonderful creation, often advertised with the slogan “Miner Willy is a Sissy”.

Diaries were a regular feature on the game, with Mike giving his progress and even the odd screenshot. Readers were also asked to take part, creating various sprites and ideas to put into the game. The game become cult within the pages of Commodore Scene, and the enthusiasm towards it was fantastic. Mike was surrounded by support and encouragement for his new free title. With a big thank you to Allan Bairstow (Who has very kindly spent a whole afternoon) for scanning all of the diary entries for us!… These can be located as a download at the top of the page. Be warned the zip file is about 6mb in size. Please note that one or two pages are slightly corrupted, so I will be fixing these when I next get access to the magazines.

After many months, Mike eventually released a demo to the community, with the harsh warning to crackers not to touch his game.

Sadly Mike was broken into, and had some of his disks stolen, which included most of Savage Platforms. Mike however strived to carry on and finish the game, but soon the Diaries stopped and so did mention of the game.

When asked in recent times of “When will it be finished?”, Mike mentioned that someday it would be complete. But of course this was never to be. Now Mike has stopped all C64 activities, with his C64 in his attic, so development has ceased to be now. It is also very unlikely that we will ever see it completed either.

Recently for the Christmas 2006 update, Andrew Fisher dug out some of the work he contributed to the project, which include some R2D2 droids and other various bits. We have added this to the archive, including a version of the preview with different sprites.

All that currently remains is a 1 level preview, full of colour and animations, and contains the building blocks for a rather playable game. There is no sound as present, though Dave Green did compose all the music.

Mike has kindly agreed to dig out all remains of Savage Platforms, which could be anything from around 4 playable levels to up to almost 50. It depends how much was recovered from when he was broken into.

In December 2011, Mike managed to find David Green’s two tunes that he composed, including a Pulp Fiction cover. I’ve added the music demo to the main download, and Ian Coog/HVSC has kindly provided us with the SID file as a Music download.

Additionally here is a disk inlay preserved from the Commodore Scene days and its preview release. And Mike Berry also recently dug out some artwork (Which may not have been seen before) regarding the game by Simon Reece.

A promising and exciting title which the axe fell upon…

Contributions: Andrew Fisher, Mike Berry, Allan Bairstow, Ian Coog


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/savage-platforms/
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Scorched Earth  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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This game might not look like much, with it's bare backgrounds and tiny coloured objects, but this is actually a preview C64 release, that comes across very much like Scorched Tanks on the Amiga and the MS-DOS game Scorched Earth. Developed by unctio/ver and scene released by Triad as a multiplayer game with up to 8 players, your ultimate goal is to wipe out your opponent by working out the correct trajectory that your Baby Missile flies through the air and hits dead on target!

For what is a preview release, I'm looking forward to the final game as from what I've played so far I can certainly this game being played with a party of friends taking turns, shooting missiles across the horizon, while also avoiding the landscape in a strong head wind!


http://www.indieretronews.com/2015/11/scorched-earth-ms-dos-inspired-classic.html
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Scorpion  (Preview)
Original title: Scorpion - Fight Without Mercy
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1996 Cherry Software
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: The Digital Brain
Graphics: The Digital Brain
Sound: Unknown

After Turrican 2 and before Turrican 3 by Protovision and Smash Designs, another Turrican clone was being formed with a different main character.

"Scorpion" was hoping to take off from where Turrican 2 left off and continue the craze of the first two games. Though not officially by Manfred Trenz, or official in anyway, it was a nice thing to see when the preview first turned up.

The graphics are mainly just ripped straight from Turrican, with a different head and different map. It’s likely that Manfred’s map editor has been used to knock up a different map.

There isn’t much new at all here that differs from the other Turrican games. The preview lacks a display for score and other bits, and all the weapons are missing. The actual game’s engine is pretty much intact though. The map is fairly large, though incompletable.

Thanks to Milo Mundt, a second preview has been pointed out which we have added. This version is not much different to the one we already have, apart from the inclusion of new title screens and a end sequence (maybe a little too early).

It has been discovered that this game was being written for Cherry Software, begun in 1995 and cancelled around 1997 time. I am guessing that the depleting scene is a reason for the game being cancelled. Although looking like a very strong Turrican clone, there was nothing particularly evident that suggested it was anything special at present. It is possible that the programmers have a lot more to this game, but more research is needed. Can anyone help?

A lot more information needed for this game before anything can really be done about finding a later version.

A nice Turrican 2 clone, with little new to offer…

Contributions: Milo Mundt


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/scorpion/
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Scramble 2010  (Preview 2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Secret of Robert Roy  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Shylock  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Shylock
1988 Deesl

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Mark Gallagher
Graphics: Ed Campbell
Sound: Mark Wilson

A currently unknown game which is still being investigated by GTW.

In a music collection sent out to software houses as a demo by Mark Wilson, Mark mentions music for a game called SHYLOCK being developed by Deesl Designs.

Now, from issue 55 of ZZAP!, there was a news item about Ocean developing a game called THE MERCHANT OF VENICE where the played played the part of Shylock…

"Ocean director Gary Bracey announces SHYLOCK, MERCHANT OF VENICE. A maze game with the characters chased by a pound of flesh.". It was found not to be connected to the version by Deesl.

Mark Wilson (MW20) created music for the game, featured in a music demo, and GTW recently got in touch with Mark about the game. Mark has been porting his disks, and kindly dug out a preview he was sent of the game from Mark Gallagher who programmed it.

It is a very simple space SEU game, with an impressive landscape to fly over… Mark’s music suits the game well… and overall this is a promising preview which no doubt would have done quite well on a particular label had it been released. The game was inspired by Vulcan Venture according to Mark Gallagher and was the result of a small production over the summer holiday and a few weeks.

Sadly after trying to get a publisher after showing the game to everyone at the PCW88 show, no-one picked it up and the game was sadly scrapped as a result. A huge shame.

It is a good find for GTW, and we are glad that Mark shared this with GTW to show people what the game behind his music looks and plays like. Its not much to look at, but its a game mystery basically solved. Read the coder’s own words in Creator Speaks!

This is all that ever existed of the game, so there is no search to be made. It is indeed the end of the road for the search.

Case closed …

Contributions: Gary Bracey, Mark Wilson, Mark Gallagher

---

Mark Gallagher talks about work on Shylock...

"Back in 1988, Ed and I decided that we were going to write the mother of all shoot-em-ups on the C64. Over a period of years (with much dogging of school!) we'd taught ourselves how to develop games, me on the code and Ed on the graphics. I've always been a fan of shoot-em-ups especially the horizontally scrolling variety and Shylock was inspired by Vulcan Venture (one of the Gradius series).

Ed's parent's had a holiday home on an island off the west coast of Scotland and so during the summer holidays we went there for a week to start writing the game. We each had a crate of 12x1.5 litre bottles of coke to fuel the development process - I finished my crate after 5 days and started on Ed's, probably explains all my fillings! We got the main bones of the game done in Millport and continued it once we got back to Glasgow.

At the time, I was receiving loads of C64 demos and one demo in particular (Mark Wilson's Outrun remix) stood out, so I gave him a phone to ask him if he'd be interested in doing some music for the game which I was going to be taking down to the PC show in September. Mark very kindly obliged and wrote a suitably atmospheric track in time for the september show.

The night before the PC show was an allnighter, trying to get everything just right with the demo, but alas it was all in vain because after spending the day walking round all the publishers, nobody was interested in taking the game on and after that I lost interest in developing it further."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/shylock/
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Sigue Sigue Sputnik  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1986 Significance
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Tony Gibson, Tony Sellinger (?)
Graphics: Mark Harrison
Sound: Mark Harrison

---

“Behold, the fifth generation of home computer entertainment Get the Sigue Sigue Sputnik computer game from your favourite software house now…” – was the advert blurted out after one of Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s tracks on their recent album back in 1986. Credits listed on the album were TONY SELLINGER/GIBBO.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik was to follow in the footsteps of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and have their very own game produced. The game was meant to be a sort
of spiritual follow up to the classic Jammin’ game but with twists of Ocean Frankie Goes to Hollywood blended in. It seems the success of Ocean’s game was enough to give others confidence of doing a similar title.  Did I say Jammin’ ?  A clue to the credits – Read on!

Computer and Video Games issue 60 first gave news of this game with a column of text that gives an insight into what the game was to be featuring:

“”No, no” I screamed, as the editor grabbed me by the hair and dragged me kicking to my Commodore 64. “I don’t want to review it!”, I protested. “It’s just hype, the game doesn’t really exist!”. “Now calm down Tony,” Tim ordered. (Tim’s the kind of guy who can make a kick in the teeth seem reasonable…). Having wired my chair to the mains, Tim suggested I get on with the review before a fuse blew… Who am I to argue? The latest, not to mention hottest, piece of software to hit my sweaty palms is the official Sigue Sigue Sputnik game.

Don’t groan! It’s poor, it’s ugly, it’s offensive and it’s down right mean, but I love it! Your problem, readers, in deciding whether this review is legit! SSS are well known for their hype and general bad taste and I would hate to ruin that reputation. The game is based in the 21st Century and you play it in front of a giant video screen which splits your TV screen into four equal quarters. You are faced with dozens of TV channels to choose from and various characters take to the video screens and try to blow Tony James to bits (hooray). You control Tony James (who is beautifully animated) at the bottom of the screen and can strut around firing at the beastly attackers. When you have destroyed an attacker in one window he reappears in the next window and so on until all four video screens have been filled. When one window is cleared there is a clapperboard countdown from seven to one and that attacker appears in that window as a large animated graphic.

Each level has four attack waves and each wave has 400 sprites. There will be six levels to work through (at four waves per level that makes 2400 sprites, this must be a record). The general feel of the game is very good and despite its basic shoot-em-up theme there are a lot of very exciting ideas and graphics that will grab and hold you for many a session.

Other characters who appear include Madonna, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Norman Tebbit, Maggie, and a mysterious roadie. Again all are larger than life and very well animated. Tony Gibson is writing the game and has developed a new graphics system (“A computer generated character set”) to handle the very special effects. The game should be released in September and will initially be released on the Commodore 64 (around £9.95) with versions to follow for the Spectrum and Amstrad””

The news item came complete a loading screen picture, which looks like it was done by Mark Harrison – due to the MH initials which seem to be in the corner.  A colour version was printed in Commodore User, who seemed to suggest it was a fan picture.  We’re hoping to get this confirmed soon.

During our time researching – we had an interesting snippet from Ben Hayes (who was working at Enigma Variations at the time) about his experience with the game…

“I’m probably responsible for losing the only surviving copy of the unfinished “Sigue Sigue Sputnik” game, which was previewed in C&VG around 1986 (they printed a screenshot).

I found it while going through a load of old C64 discs while at EV, but I’m not sure who was responsible for coding it. It was a playable game but there was no scoring or structure to it, but you controlled a SSS-esque bloke, firing things at a bank of TV screens which showed caricatures of various celebrities (I remember Phil Collins being one).

That disc is another that was lost about 15 years ago (left at a friend’s house, I never got them back and he said they got caught up in some flooding and were chucked…)”

Terrible news and from a credible source – but was it surely the last ever copy?  And why was it found at Enigma Variations?  Darren Melbourne helped to join up the dots, as when Darren first told us about his involvement with the game – we realized that Mark Greenshields worked at Enigma Variations, and seems the most logical way the game got there.  Darren Melbourne confirmed that both of them had some minor involvement in the game, but only from a potential publishing stand point.  Darren had seen it and played it too.

Darren confirmed that both Tony Gibson and Mark Harrison were the guys behind the game, but there was no idea who Tony Sellinger (the man credited on the album) was.

The game was shown to a variety of the big publishers at the time, there were various publicity stunts attempted to get the game heard about.   Even with a bunch of the guys promoting the game going to Domark, all dressed up, and demanding £80,000 for the game – before being promptly told to f**k off.

Darren confirmed that the game never progressed beyond early talks. Nexus were most interested in publishing the game, but weren’t interested in taking the financial risk involved in paying for the development. After that the game effectively ground to a halt at the end of 1986/87 and was the last that Darren heard of the game.  Tony and Mark went on to do other titles such as Beat It! and Rainbow Warrior – but SSS was put to rest.

Over the years, GTW64 and C64.com had processed Darren’s disks for preservation and saved many titles (including Nuker), but there was nothing of SSS sadly.  Darren however had one final large batch of disks which were shipped in December 2015 (I had mentioned to Darren at Play Expo Manchest 2015, that I had hoped to find something of the game on them).  As I went off one night to make a start preserving the disks, I half joked with my wife that I hoped to find it – but wasn’t expecting to.

Sifting out a bunch of oddly labelled or non-labelled disks and cleaning them up first of all, about 2-3 disks in gave up a directory listing with one of the titles named “Media Wars”.  Upon loading – I was presented with a flashing high-score with the words “Sputnik” at the top, and a familiar tune playing!   This was it!  Finally!

Playing the game, it was clear that it was far from completion – but the game pretty much identically matches the description which Ben Hayes gave.  It is very likely that this is infact the very same demo he played.   You can shoot lots of things, including Phil Collins – there are multiple TV screens – but the scoring is pretty odd and doesn’t mean a great deal and there doesn’t seem to be much progression.  The heads and characters change though and the main character animates very well – even though they are a bit blocky.

What sadly we couldn’t find to go along with the demo, was what we believe to be a Mark Harrison loading/intro screen as shown in CVG and Commodore User.  We scanned through Darren’s disks, and nothing was found.   We guess that Darren was just given a frozen demo, and the intro picture was never passed on.   Could that be found some day?

Also – is this as far as the game ever got?   It is believed, based on Darren’s past recollections, that it was.  This demo was done to try and get a publisher onboard – and would have been what was touted to the likes of Nexus.  The intro picture was maybe something released for the press to cause controversy due to the chopped off head perhaps?

Some day we hope to speak to Tony and Mark about the game – but for now, this is yet another famous lost C64 title recovered (and defrozen thanks to Martin Pugh) and a key piece of unreleased history preserved…


Contributions: Andrew Fisher, Wayne Womersley, Darren Melbourne, Peter Weighill, Fixater, Ross Sillifant, Darren Melbourne, Martin Pugh


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/sigue-sigue-sputnik/
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Silly Putty  (Tech-Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Putty
1991 System 3

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: John Kemp
Graphics: Robin Levy
Sound: N/A

A strange game which was popular on the Amiga, mainly for its wacky animation.

This game featured a blue blob of putty which could mould itself into numerous shapes and absorb strange creatures to help defeat a geezer called Dazzledaze. Decent animation, weird cartoony graphics etc planned to form superb platform puzzler on the 64.

Apparently the game became too complex for the 64 and was binned so that concentration was focused on Fuzzball. All that remains was to be a tech demo featuring the blob and most of its animations.

Robin Levy was confirmed to have been working on the C64 version of the game, doing all the graphics. As for the coder, it was none other than John Kemp behind the programming.

The animation was very sophisticated and ate away at memory, using up many sprites to simply stretch. The idea of having Sprite overlays was virtually impossible, and various problems occured in the development. All of this added up to morale being lost on the project, and eventuated in John Kemp leaving the games industry for good.

Jason Kelk confirmed seeing the preview while up at System 3, and apparently was at very early stages, probably what Commodore Format saw when they took their preview picture. The sprite animated very well in the demo.

Originally around 2006, things were looking very bleak. The likelyhood of the game surviving was very slim. John Kemp had checked and could not find Putty on any of his work disks. The only place it may have existed was on the 286 PDS which System 3 had. It was likely that this was now long gone, and thus Putty C64 was looking to be immortalized only as the one single solitary scanned screen from Commodore Format.

But in early 2008 things took a rather surprising turn! John Kemp managed to find a few disks labelled with "Putty" and confirmed that he had found the last version of the game. All disks were passed to Dan Phillips to preserve, but then Dan got a job in Canada and then passed the disks to Robin Levy. With everyone being very busy the past few years, it is only recently in December 2010 that Robin posted GTW a bundle of disks which included the remains of Putty.

And so we are very pleased to announce the salvaging and preservation of yet another long lost title which you can now download and check out! (Thanks to Slator for the bug fixed version!)

Now don’t expect something fully playable, as you will not find that. But what you will find is a promising tech demo with some unseen graphics done by the great Robin Levy where you can control Putty and navigate around various little platforms. Controls are a bit fiddly, especially jumping – which is achieved by holding down for a long period of time then releasing in a direction to make Putty jump far. The stretch animations are superb, and it looked like things were really coming together!

Additionally – a bonus was to discover additional screens as you climb vertically, giving a glimpse of screens never seen before. Overall the preview makes you wonder that had they not done the hi-res overlays, how a Putty conversion could well have been very possible. This early preview proves that something was possible  

Finally that’s not quite all – but there were also a bundle of PC based disks with Putty labelled which we could not read. We believe this is the source code to the preview. We don’t believe there will be anything else that isn’t in the preview, but we will try and confirm anyway and see if we can preserve the sources. Before we also forget, here are scans of the disk labels of the work disks.

So now all that is left is to possibly hear more from John Kemp himself about the game and his development thoughts, but we are now very close to closing a case which has been open for over 10 years now for GTW. Enjoy!

Case pretty much now closed and with a good ending!  

Contributions: Jason Kelk, Jed Adams, Robin Levy, Dan Phillips, John Kemp, Slator

---

Robin Levy speaks about work on Putty...

"Right then, as far as I can remember money was tight around the 64 Putty and Fuzzball era and most of us weren't too happy. John Kemp was indeed the first programmer on Putty64 and got a controllable character on screen, however there were a lot of technical issues that would have meant changing some of the core aspects of the Amiga original.

The main character was very expensive on sprites (especially when stretched horizontally) so this had an impact on the number of enemies and the robot sprites that the player was supposed to rescue. I distinctly remember having a bee in my bonnet about using overlaid sprites (hires over multicolour) which wouldn't have helped in the slightest.

Anyway, none of these problems were so major that we couldn't have got around them with a little effort but morale was pretty low. So low that John Kemp decided on a complete career change and left the games industry. :-(

I can't remember if anyone took over Putty but I'm sure that it never progressed beyond the tech demo stage... it was around this time that I left System 3 to work on Ruff 'n' Tumble."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/putty/
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Snow Bros  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Snow Bros
1991 Ocean

Status: No Download, Findability: 2/5
Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

Ocean had a bucket load of titles in development at the time, and Snow Bros was one of them. This was gonna be a conversion of the fairly popular arcade, which was kinda like a clone of Bubble Bobble with snow.

The game promised some great graphics and sound in typical Ocean style, but it was never to be.

The actual state of this game is unknown. Its likely it was stuck on a development system and eventually wiped. Either that or they decided to scrap that license and concentrate on the Parasol Stars licence, which ironically also didn’t get released on the C64.

Only a few news snippets were the existance of this game in the magazines, and no screenshots ever surfaced.

Does anyone know any more on this game?…
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Soldier of Light V1  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
198? ACE Software
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Carl Coffey
Graphics: Carl Coffey
Sound: Unknown

Soldier Of Light was not a particularly memorable conversion of the arcade game from ACE software back in the mid to late 80’s. However, the weak result was found to be possibly down to this very version which sits in GTW…

Carl Coffey was the coder of this game, and produced a very well presented demo featuring the main character and some cut scenes. The main character moved, but that was it. There was no scrolling or anything playable. A screenshot of this demo was published in Commodore User magazine, so we know that this was originally to be the official conversion.

Although the game looks better than the completed effort, it is unfair to compare, as this isn’t really playable!… Plus with the cancellation of this version, the new team that had to take over were left with far less time to get a quality product out. More time seems to have been spent on graphics in this preview.

Rob Whitaker has kindly put his story across about the completed version, after it was found that this review originally unfairly took digs at the completed version, and wished more of this particular version. Considering the time limits they had, Rob’s team did wonders to get something out like they did. No doubt had the guys had the full development time, things may have been more successful. Reading Creator Speaks will explain more in Rob’s own words.

So what happened to version 1?… Well, we don’t know, and neither does Rob.

Darren Melbourne recently particially solved the mystery, by mentioning…

"Carl actually walked away from the project after The Edge software company never honoured any of it’s payment schedules. Carl was a good coder and an exceptional artist, who could have created an excellent conversion of SOL, if he had been paid. Carl created many C64 games which didn’t see the light of day, with Hobey Joe (the story of a winged Gryphon type creature) being outstanding for it’s 1984 dateline. As far as I know Carl left the industry disullusioned by the poeple who ran publishing companies."

So sadly it was nothing to do with Carl not being able to do the conversion, but non-payment. How would Carl’s version have shaped up? Did Carl do more than this demo?… Was anything actually playable? Just how far Carl got before he left is unknown. Contact is needed with Carl to find out more, and even see how much more was done. Quite possibly Level 1 could exist in a more fuller form at the very least. It will be interesting to find out and see.

So for now we are left to ponder what could have been, though when compared with the prototype previews of R-Type, there is not much to ponder, as there simply isn’t enough evidence.

Faithful to the eye, but covering up not a great deal…

Contributions: Christopher Magro, Rob Whitaker, Darren Melbourne

---

Rob Whitaker and Carl Coffey speak about Soldier Of Light V1...

Carl Coffey:

"It was good reading Rob’s account of the game, difficulties and stuff that culminated in what was a good conversion given the amazingly short time frame for completion.

The Soldier of Light demo I coded included the first and most of the second levels. The idea was to incorporate parallax landscape scrolling with a raster split half way down the screen as had been used to great effect by Jeff Minter and Tony Crowther (and did anyone else used to get the Llamasoft Christmas card’s that used to be sent each year?).

Most of the coding for the SOL demo was done using Ocean’s Laser Genius machine code compiler. I was also more fortunate than Rob and the crew in that I had several mornings of playing the Taito arcade game prior to coding up at the Edge’s offices. The menu system had originally been given a dry run at the beginning of a modified S.E.U.K game also published by The Edge (or ACE) which was created in 1988 as was the sound system that was to be incorporated in the Soldier of Light demo.

The art work and publicity had been set in motion prior to the completion of the demo then sadly difficulties with what had been a verbal contract (gulp!!!) came into play that Darren Melbourne (a very very good friend from another life) has described on this web site. The original disks and original publicity material is still around and hopefully I’ll be able to get the source code for everyone else to download once I’ve dusted the disks down and given them a quick boot on my now ancient c128 (if it still works) or the old faithful C64. I left the c64 world in 1988’ish to devote more time playing in a progressive rock band (hey, we all got our vices!!) and importantly to get a job that paid on time.

I Wonder if Darren still remembers the programmersgames paradise that used to sit above shops in Welling during the early 1980’s ;o) Happy days."

Carl Coffey (Jan 2006) 

Rob Whitaker:

"Firstly, the finished game was released on the ACE label, which was SOFTEK's arcade conversion label. They are the same company, and also released games as THE EDGE. I will refer to them as Softek (as I believe that was the main company name). 

The 'Soldier of Light V.1' game you have listed is nothing more than a demo. I don't know why it was produced. Maybe it was released on a magazine cover tape? 

I don't know who Carl Coffey is, and whether he worked at Softek or was a freelancer. I don't know if he was meant to write the game originally or not. 

You compared this demo with the finished game unfairly as, though it does indeed look nice, it's nothing more than some static screens and a moving sprite. Not much going on and nowhere near a finished game. 

Here's where I come in: After producing a budget game for Softek, Ian and Mic were asked to do the conversion of this arcade game, which I would provide graphics for. We were naturally very excited to be given the chance to work on such a game. 

However the game had to be completed in a ridiculously short time. I can't remember how long but it was little more than a couple of months or so. AND we had no reference to work from than a videocassette of the game being played. I'm sure other arcade conversions were sometimes done 
this way back then but I wanted to explain what we had to work with. 

I admit that we were relatively inexperienced and probably couldn't have done much better but to compare our finished game to a simple demo is a little unfair. 

I personally am bothered by the graphics in the game. My sprites were all changed for the worse by someone at Softek. Not that mine were necessarily better but I felt they were more faithful to the arcade graphics. 

Oh, and Jeroen Tel was brought to the game by us, having done music for a couple of our previous games. Is there music on the demo? I don't think it's by Jeroen.

I only vaguely remember us being told that the game had been started but then abandoned--I don't remember any reason--and so we had a short time to do it. This sort of thing unfortunately happens in the games industry to this day. 

I never saw the Carl Coffey version until years later and realized that must have been the original game. 

And to end the story suitably we were ripped off by Softek who never paid us. And that's all I have to say on the subject!"

Rob Whitaker.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/soldier-of-light-v1/
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Space Ace  (Firebird)  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Space Ace  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Space Ace
1988 Gregg Kustudic

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Gregg Kustudic
Graphics: Scott ?
Sound: Unknown

A rather interesting entry for an unofficial conversion of Space Ace for the C64. Not the same as the planned version being done by Empire Software in 1990-91, but a version way back in 1987/88 by Gregg Kustudic and his friend Scott.

The developers were so disappointed by the Dragons Lair conversion that was done by Software Projects, that they decided to have a go at doing Space Ace and show how a Laserdisc could be converted successfully to the humble C64.

They produced the first level from a possible 15, after borrowing a Space Ace cab and carefully replicating the various parts of the level. According to the developers it was very faithful, and of which can be seen partly from the screenshots.

They showed and pitched it to Electronic Arts, but they were not interested and rejected it. However, a year later and EA were releasing their own conversion of Space Ace on the likes of the Amiga.

It seems that Gregg then decided to call it a day and the C64 conversion was canned. However in recently years Gregg got a web presence and added up a page with the work on the game and various screenshots – which seemed to suggest that the conversion still existed and was still runnable.

In 2009, GTW got hold of Gregg and he very kindly offered to post us a copy of the final remains of the game. He did this, and GTW is very proud to present what Gregg and Scott produced, which is a rather nice conversion!

It is a little rough around the edges, but it shows just how well a C64 conversion could have shaped up. It reminds me a lot of the work of Paul Norman, and works very well. It’s a shame that Electronic Arts didn’t sign up the guys to finish it off! The preview happens a bit fast, so we recommend you read the instructions. Please note that the disk original version is NTSC based, so use the patched version instead if you are PAL based!

Salvaged and preserved … a taste of what could have been. Case closed!…

Contributions: Doc, Ian Coog, Gregg Kustudic

---

Gregg Kustudic talks about work on Space Ace (Taken from website)...

"Now lets travel back in time a ways. 1987, and two guys who listen to music by a band who's name we're not allowed to say on the air attempt an ambitious port of the arcade laserdisk classic Space Ace to the Commodore 64.

Scott did most of the graphics, while I handled the programming. We began by bribing a friend's friend who worked in an arcade to take the Space Ace machine out of service and haul it in back where we recorded a playback of the laser disk onto videotape.

Scott and I eventually finished one out of about 15 carefully planned levels, and it turned out absolutely great. We used a funny little box called "Computereyes", which was a video digitizer for the Commodore 64, to digitize this frame from Space Ace, which we captured on Scotts' Parents' at the time fancy new frame store VCR.

The idea was to have a digitized frame from the arcade game introducing each of the levels.

The game we put together was truly amazing, in that it actually WAS Space Ace! On a lowly Commodore 64! One could master Space Ace in the arcade, and then play our C64 version, and all the moves and timing needed to beat the arcade game were exactly the same in our version.

I guess Scott and I were deeply offended by the horrible port of Dragon's Lair that had come out previously, which bore no resemblance to the play mechanic of the original. We were determined to show that a laser disk game COULD be ported faithfully to the Commodore 64.

This was accomplished through some clever machine language code I devised, which actually took the form of what would now be called a virtual machine interpreting byte code. As well, it was accomplished through Scott's fantastic multisprite graphics.

The story gets stranger. We shipped our demo to Electronic Arts, who rejected the game, saying that they had never heard of an arcade game called Space Ace. But EOA released their own game called Space Ace within a year of having seen our demo.

Scott and I never did manage to see what the Electronic Arts version of Space Ace actually looked like, and find out if they stole anything from us. Anyone out there with knowledge of the Electronic Arts version of Space Ace: it would be a gas to hear from you."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/space-ace/
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Space Action 2  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1984 Arne Fernlund
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Arne Fernlund
Graphics: Arne Fernlund
Sound: N/A

A short entry for a recent discovery by Genesis Project in the shape of a sequel to a very early C64 game called Space Action.   The game was released in Sweden by Handic Software and was fairly well recieved.

The coder, Arne Fernlund, produced a platformer sequel which was released – but actually had planned to do a proper Space Action 2 sequel.  This was discovered by a chap called Spelpappan, who helped to recover the game and wrote a blog entry over at his Swedish games blog.  GP got hold of the game and did some quick tidy ups to release the title and get it fully preserved.

The game is at a very early stage, and just has the main ship flying over a nice mountain background.  There are no enemies at this stage.   Handic were not informed about the sequel, and it seems that Arne just got bored with it and moved onto other projects.

But here it is, fully preserved!

Contributions: Genesis Project, Hedning

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/space-action-2/
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Spaced Out  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
Another release by Laxity today is Steve Morrow's 1992 C64 game of 'Spaced Out', which is now available as a very early almost non playable preview. According to a member by the name of Goat on the CSDb site, this game was only shown as a YouTube video, yet Laxity was able to find the source code, repair it, debug and release. However don't expect much from this game(?) as apart from a few screens and a moving shooting character, there's really not much that can be done.

What I did find interesting about Spaced Out and it wasn't the game play, if any, but Laxity did say that this was a real challenge to fix up and release. As according to them, the code and instructions were a mess with typos, and words spelt incorrectly. So hats off to them in sorting that out, I just hope they can actually make a game out of this, as it could be a nifty looking sci-fi styled shooter.


http://www.indieretronews.com/2015/08/spaced-out-preview-early-alpha-of.html#more
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Spaceinvadaz extra  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
19?? Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

As you may have guessed, Space Invadaz was to be a Space Invader clone, but modernized with a fresh new look.

It isn’t known what the game was intended for and for whom, but the development disks recovered by Triad in 2016 suggest that the game may have been developed for a magazine coverdisk.

So no credits at the moment, but we hope to find out soon and learn more about the game and what the intentions were. In its current state, its quite playable and features some lovely graphics.

More soon we hope!

Contributions: Taper/Triad


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/space-invadaz/
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Spacer-X  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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It's a horizontally scrolling shoot'em up.

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To do:

Eliminate stutter in scrolling
Tighten up collisions
Add end of level and end game sequences
Implement score
Add bosses and enemy rush for end of levels


https://sites.google.com/site/malcontentsgames/spacer-x
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Spellcast  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1991 Genesis

Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5
Coding: Dave Clarke
Graphics: Jon Smyth
Sound: Ashley Hogg

From the brains behind CJ, Spike in Trans and Nobby the Ardvaark, came a preview of a great little hack and jump game which featured smart GFX and some great features.

It reminded me of a classic NES game of somesort (Castlevania?). Because of Choice’s demise, Spellcast grinded to a halt after a years worth of work. A shame because I really enjoyed it!… Its a lovely preview, and something which brings me fond memories of when I was growing up, and when I got the megatape from a second hand shop.

Never properly finished.. No chance of finding many other previews, except for the only one that came with Megatape 18.

Ashley Hogg confirmed that one level was all that was really created, though contact with Dave and Jon will confirm if anything more exists. Jon so far believes that only level one was complete.

Jon sheds light by telling us to look carefully at the game’s title screen. As you will see, the game seems to have a map similiar to that in Ghosts and Goblins. Essentially the game was to follow the map, starting in the forest, moving to a village and then gradually to a Castle.

The game was to boast some massive sprites, and feature a lot of elements which Dave and John felt C64 games were lacking. The game was also planned to be a single load, but as more and more got added… the game was for certain turning into a Multiload game. If only it did turn out just that way…

GTW is yet to speak to Dave Clarke about the game, and we hope to hear from him very soon. Maybe, just maybe there are some remains of sketches and ideas, sprites etc for more levels… but time will tell.

Here is something though which may interest people. While scouring through the demo, I came across some sprites which haven’t actually been used in the preview, a nice skeleton like creature, which was obviously going to be used at some point.

Also, if you want a neat little cheat, pop a joystick in port 1 and you can move the log’s in the air, so you can fly your way through the game in the air.

Stunning game, sadly never completed…

Contributions: Jon Temples, Ash Hogg

---

Jon Smyth speaks about work on Spellcast...

"Well the game started because David and i were fans of Ghost 'n' Goblins and Barbarian. We had not written any published games yet so we decided to give it a go.

David's programming was starting to take off and so we went into it. The coding was not that re-useable so David ran out of memory and thought about a multi-load option. We then tried to sell it to people but got no responses.

We then tried a cutey elephant game and that's how CJ was born. David and I loved the spellcast game and tried to put as many moves and options into it. The player, hacks, jumps, and uses objects etc.

The levels were meant to progress in the manner of the title screen. The title screen has the Spellcast name but below is a black outline of a forest leading to a castle on the hill.

Well the first level was the forest. Next the swamp. Then the town leading to the castle.

The castle was going to have a very varied level theme. The end of level enemies were huge and if only someone had pumped money into it I could have worked.

As with David, Ashley and myself we loved the games we did and it was the love and the anger
 sometimes of the poor conversions made for the Commodore 64. Spellcast had everything I think and we always tried to very our graphic look. If you look at spell-cast, cj's and nobby - its all so different. We always tried to not become type-cast and always be different.

I may have disks in the house or sprites or ideas etc. David and I loved the commodore 64 scene then. All our games got good reviews and some times I feel that now I work in graphic design/product design the excitement of the 1990's is one thing I miss.

I would love screen shots of the Spellcast in various points or sprites as my imac crashes the game on the title screen."

Jon Smyth (Now Temples).


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/spellcast/
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Spooky  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
2016 Johan Forslöf
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Johan Forslöf
Graphics: Paul Helman
Sound: Cadaver

Our next GTW title can only be described as stunning. Though it is with sadness that we are placing it into the archives on the request of the author Johan Forslöf.

We have spoken to Johan over the past few years about the title, and each time we’ve encouraged him to continue and try to pick up the drive to finish the extemely promising title. We have resisted adding the title to the archive given that there was still a chance it could be finished. The game was started around 7-8 years ago and has been come back to on numerous occasions.

This year was different, and Johan has told us to just go ahead and put the final preview into the archives. The game shows a very ‘Braid’ looking main character, who with his hi-res overlay, looks amazing and animates very well. The backgrounds I thought were done with extended background mode, but they are actually standard multi-colour hi-res (though Johan planned to do ECM at a later stage).  They are wonderfully atmospheric, with a few enemies that you can shoot.

There is not a huge amount to do just yet, apart from explore the multi-directional scrolling areas of the castle environment at this stage, but it is a great indication of what a fantastic game this really could be. The problem is that Johan has kept losing motivation with the game, and has never been fully sure what the full direction of the game should be.

The good news is that Johan is still open for the game to be continued, but needs someone to help give motivation and ideas to further progress the game. So rather than a graveyard entry, we want this potentially to be an advert for something that could be more. Possibly code and artistic assistance to take the game forward. If anyone is interested, please contact me and I can forward your details to Johan.

It would be a shame to see this one die.   Can it be saved?

Contributions: Johan Forslöf, iAN CooG


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/spooky/
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Sputnik  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Squad Force Five  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Squid Jump  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
199? Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Tobias Svensson

Squid is a cute little single screen preview which has some nice hi-res overlaid sprites which move around and which you must avoid.

The game isn’t fully playable and just allows you to jump around the map and interact with a few objects.

We know very little else about the game though, including who it was for and who it was being written by. It is possible that a version exists with more game mechanics and levels, but it could be tough trying to find any more of it.


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/squid/
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Squirm 2  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
A rather early build with a long way to go yet in development, you must collect all the eggs dropped by what looks like a red comb, before the time runs out to complete the level. Just watch out for the green creature, as it eats up all the eggs and must be avoided or your life force will slowly drain.

What makes this an early dev game is the fact that nothing happens when your life force runs out, plus there is no sound and the level just resets when you've collected all the eggs. The other major is, apart from just one player, if you get stuck behind dead ends, then there is nothing you can do but wait to the timer runs out to get the level to reset.

Still though, I think once the game is finished I think it's going to be very enjoyable and well worth waiting for.


http://www.indieretronews.com/2015/12/squirm-2-preview-c64-christmas-present.html
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Starblast  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
199? Cascade
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Mr Lee
Graphics: Mr Lee
Sound: Unknown

A game which was to be a mixture between "Elite", "Ultima", "Pirates" and "Space Rogue".

When Mr Lee lost a bit his inspiration he also started coding on a game, what he described as a ‘little game’. This was "Colonial Trader", which appeared to be the 2D Version of the 3D "Starblast".

Motivation for the Starblast project was low after trouble with "Colonial Trader".

Some things were already finished for the game, like the code for the intro, the opening and the storypart, some Editors and 3D Routines (which later were partly used in demos).

Also ready was the flying sequence, what meant you could fly around in space (with a 3D Starfield) and shoot (see screenshots), although there is nothing to shoot at.

There was a FLI-title screen (unfortunately lost), the spacestations screen, gouverners-graphics (about 20 of ’em or more) and also some 3D animations for the Spacestation (see screenshots), done in this early state with Giga-CAD 8Mhz, later on PC/SGI.

The actual storypart was released as a preview. The fact that some lamers were "cracking" an unprotected gameintro and equipping it with a very ugly and lame crackerintro, made the creators sure not to continue on this project.

So sadly the game screens you can see are exclusive to GTW from what I know, and may be all what you will see of this game…. Hopefully one day soon, Zeldin will allow us to upload what is left of this cool game for the archives.

Cool Elite style game, sadly incompleted…

Contributions: Zeldin, Stefan Gutsch

---

Zeldin speaks about work on Starblast...

"When I met Mr.Lee (Maxim Szenessi), he was already coding on "Starblast", a game which should have been a mixture between "Elite", "Ultima", "Pirates" and "Space Rogue". When he lost a bit his inspiration he also started coding on a game, what he described as a 'little game'. This was "Colonial Trader", which appeared to be the 2D Version of the 3D "Starblast".

Of course we totally lost our motivation for that project after this shit with "Colonial Trader". Not only I made a first handshake-contact with "Bomico" (a friend of mine was working there, and they were located 'just around the corner' here in Frankfurt where I live) but also some things were already finished like the code for the intro, the opening and the storypart, some Editors and 3D Routines (which later were partly used in our demos). Also ready was the flying sequence, what means you could fly around in space (with a 3D Starfield) and shoot, although there was nothing to shoot at :-).

I already finished some grafics, like a FLI-title screen (which is somehow lost), the spacestations screen, gouverners-grafics (about 20 of 'em or more) and also some 3D animations for the Spacestation (see screenshots), done in this early state with Giga-CAD 8Mhz, later on PC/SGI. The last thing we did was releasing the Storypart as preview. The fact that some lamers were "cracking" an unprotected gameintro and equipping it with a very ugly and lame crackerintro, made us sure not to continue on this project."

Zeldin.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/starblast/
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Starglider 2  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1989 Rainbird

Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5
Coding: Pete Baron
Graphics: Bob Stevenson and Pete Baron
Sound: N/A

The sequel to one of the biggest 16-bit vector games was started on the C64 way back in 1989, trying to improve on the original version.

Way back in August 1988, the 16-bit versions were reviewed. In the interview with Jez San that followed, he says:

“In the end we found some good Commodore 64 programmers and they are going to be working with us. We’re going to supply our routines and lots of help, and they’re going to be programming the 6502… everyone in our company is a 16-bit programmer, no-one wanted to go back to 8-bit.”

Additionally worthy of note, but the Amstrad and Spectrum versions actually surfaced… so no doubt this was no impossible conversion.

An official conversion in the making, which seems to be what we have here. Similar to Mercenary, but nowhere near as good, the game was scrapped due to speed issues, a shame as it was starting to develop nicely and take shape. With the preview which has been out there for a while, you can actually leave the planet, and go into ‘Elite’ mode and hunt around. Quite an impressive preview, it’s not known how complete this preview actually is – though it actually seems to be we believe practically the complete game.

Recently in 2009, we had an email from Pete Baron who said that this was his game!…. Whilst working on Myth, Pete was offered to do the C64 conversion. In total, 6 months was spent on actual coding whilst doing Myth, and Pete spent a lot of time trying to get up on the 3D side of things on the C64. He had never done any 3D work on the C64 before, but had been promised by Jez Sans to get any resources possible from their team to help. He had some info, but had to do a lot of working out himself. He managed to get some routines and got to work. A bit through the project, Pete demonstrated things to Jez who felt the game was far too slow. Pete then tried to improve things, and did manage to… but then Space Rogue happened…

Space Rogue featured solid filled vectors on the C64 and was very very fast for a 0.98mhz machine. It blew Pete’s work out of the water and Jez had seen it too. They now had to try and match Space Rogue, so Pete now had the impossible mission of getting a solid version working. He did just that, but the frame rate was just too poor filled in. In the end, the project was canned and no more. (You can read more detail from Pete in the Creator Speaks section)

Just how the game sneaked out in its current form is unknown, but the fantastic news was that Pete did actually do a complete conversion of the game in the end that never got released, and in two flavours… the wireframe edition, and potentially a filled vector version too.

Pete in late 2010 dug out all the remains he had of Starglider 2, which was believed to be the very last build of the game. Jani Tahvanainen very kindly spent a lot of time digging through and reconstructing the game. Unfortunately though it seems that once compiled, that even though the date suggests it was a last build – the preview seems far more complete in comparison.

The version salvaged does not feature a complete game panel area, and starts with a test screen with Pete’s name mentioned and a date of 1988. You can use the F1 key to start moving around, and going into space just gives you a black screen. Unfortunately although the Solid 3D flags were present in the source code, the actual implementation doesn’t seem to be present.

It is believed that an additional block of work was done to get the panels in and starfields, and the solid 3D work was completed. It seems very much so that the preview which we already had may well be a build from the very final version of the source code. Just sadly we won’t be able to unlock the solid 3D version without the source. As a result, this could be a complete version of Starglider 2, though it may need playing through to clarify.

However, as well as getting a build of the game which has elements not in the preview, a long lost piece of work by Bob Stevenson has been salvaged, and would have been the game’s loading screen. Also Pete has very kindly allowed us to release the source code that was recovered, which you can now download to check out for yourself. There are two versions, Pete’s original supplied source code, and a tweaked/fixed up version by Jani.

So we have to now close the case for this one (Unless the supplier of the old preview to GP has the sources?), as what Pete recovered was all that Pete had and could still be read from disk. Every physical piece of media was dumped after digitally preserving what could be preserved, and before Pete left the UK to travel the world.

Have an explore around and see what you can uncover. Maybe there is more to the old "preview" than we all first thought?

Space exploration going a step further on the C64… Case closed!

Contributions: Glenn Rune Gallefois, Pete Baron, Bob Stevenson, Patrick Furlong, Jazzcat, Jani Tahvanainen

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Pete Baron talks about work on Starglider 2...

"There's not much of a story for SGII the whole thing was a bit of a disaster and the project only lasted for 6 months (compared with 12 months for Salamander and almost 18 for Myth!). It was another contract that Jacqui Lyons (my agent) offered me towards the end of development of Myth and I overlapped the two projects for a couple of months - Jez Sans was very keen for me to get started right away and was willing to accept that I couldn't give it 100% attention until Myth was finished.

At the start I was promised all sorts of help with the maths and getting high speed 3D graphics going on the C64 (I was obviously somewhat skeptical of doing this game on a machine with a 1MHz processor!) but they pulled the spec in to 'wire frame' and with the offer of loads of good algorithms I thought it should be doable. Unfortunately in the beginning the only really useful thing I got from them was an equation that permits fast approximations to a square-root... useful but on it's own not enough to make the game particularly fast or smooth. So I was pretty much on my own with some books about 3D programming (remember back then the internet wasn't around, nowadays I'd just go online and get a thousand articles about 3D optimisation!).

About 3/4 of the way through the project, Jez called me in-house to see the latest demo and finally get me hooked up with one of their 3D whizz-kids. It was a very dissappointing experience for both sides... Jez thought the demo was too primitive looking and wanted more polys on-screen, further draw distance, and smoother motion; while I discovered that this whizz-kid was straight out of Uni and didn't have a clue about machine language optimisation - I spent a very dull 2 hours explaining why using matrices would be slower than the code I had written already (if you use matrices you end up doing multiply by 1 and multiply by 0 a lot, whereas if you unroll the logic you can just skip all those pointless operations whenever the values are fixed in either matrix). After I finally convinced him (by making the change he was nagging for, summing clock ticks, then comparing with my previous code which was about 15% faster) he didn't have any other suggestions.

From then on the project was on pretty thin ice. I couldn't find any way of increasing the detail without making the game unbearably slow, and Jez was stuck on the idea that some of his guys could show me tricks - but they just weren't delivering. I plodded on for the sake of getting the game out of my way. I was already starting to think about future projects - Myth was long gone and the money for SGII was ridiculously poor. Jez hired Bob to do the loading screen which came out superbly... I really will have to try to recover that for you when I get back to NZ. Finally I just went in at the end of the contract and said, 'here it is - it's finished'. All the game elements were complete and it was playable... it looked pretty basic, and didn't move very smoothly because I had to compromise on the frame rate vs draw distance.

At about this time that solid fill 3D game came out for the C64 - 'space pirates' or 'predator' (Andrew: SPACE ROGUE by Origin?) or something like that... I played it and was blown away... I'm still not sure what they did to make it so smooth - I had a feeling that they used dynamic character mapped graphics instead of the bitmap mode, which would give them extremely fast fills for large flat areas - but SGII was written for bitmap mode and it was too late for such a major change. Jez of course points at that and says 'we have to go solid or we won't sell any'. Once again I'm in a room with some of his top guys telling me to try this and that - they showed me how to do solid 3D using horizontal fill lines so I take that algorithm and away I go to spend a week squeezing clock-ticks out of the inner loops and setting up self-modifying exit points so it can straight-line blit arbitrary length horizontal lines at the maximum possible speed. In the end we had a solid 3D version of the game which only lost 3 FPS over the wire-frame version - but it was still too much; the game went from being 'a bit clunky' to being nearly unplayable. Telecomsoft(?) pulled the plug and that was the end of that.

The best bit of the project for me was learning how to do 3D graphics at a time when not many games programmers had a clue. The worst bit was spending an extra week on it above and beyond the contract terms, and then they didn't even pay the final invoice!"

Then a bit more in 2010...

"Argonaut wanted a C64 version of Starglider II after it was a pretty big hit on the Amiga. They contacted me through my agent at the time (Jacqui Lyons of Marjaq) and I was just finishing up work on Myth so I accepted. Myth went over on the schedule due to a bunch of last minute requests from System 3 boss Mark Cale, so I ended up developing two projects at the same time - both on strict deadlines! The money was good but the hours were killer.

I did a vector version of SGII fairly quickly, but that brought complaints about the speed so I went in-house for a week to get programming tips from their resident 3D gurus... unfortunately these didn't add any speed at all and several of them actually slowed the game down. The optimisations on 68000 don't port well to 6510, and at the time I was already T-state counting (adding up every clock tick for every instruction in critical functions) and optimising at a machine-code level to extreme performance. The only thing that might have made a difference was a vastly improved algorithmic approach, but they didn't seem to have any of those. Oh, I must mention the one good trick I learnt there... there's a way to approximate a square-root using divide by 3 and then some messing about with data tables. I can't remember the details any more, but it did add one more FPS to the game!

Then they made a very strange managerial decision. The wire-frame version had barely acceptable performance, so they decided to go for solid 3D... I mentioned the fact that the contract was for wire-frame, and they basically said I had to make the change or not get paid for my last three milestones. I made the change (of course) and the frame rate dropped even further - if you look at the source I provided you can see there's an entire file there dedicated to drawing horizontal lines extremely quickly... but no amount of optimisation of that sort is ever going to make up for the fact that you're colouring a LOT more pixels. I believe there is a flag in the code which will switch assembly between wire-frame and solid 3D.

Finally after all this effort and mucking about, the original sponsors for the project (one of the telecom companies? I can't recall which one) backed out and decided not to publish. Before the plug got pulled, we realised we needed a title screen - it was going to be just a scene from the game but I suggested getting Bob to draw something. They got him on board and the image he produced was (as usual) superb!

So, that's SGII.. a rushed project squeezed into evenings and weekends and ultimately rejected for publication. Not my finest hour!"


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/starglider-2/
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Strobe  (Preview V2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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"Strobe" is a new addition to GTW, in which at the time, not a lot of information was known. The game was an up and coming Pong style game set in the future, and the preview in the wild was not playable, and demonstrates a nice title screen and a part of the game itself.

Credited to Double Density, it seems that this game was destined for release in the German market, but never quite made it. Ruben Spaans in 2012 came forward and shed some light on the game:

"I have a version slightly newer than the preview on GTW. It is playable, but extremely bugged. The game was never finished because I lacked motivation (I would rather make demos at that time) and because it was so hard to debug.

The differences between the old version are: new music, and it’s playable. The left and right balls can be controlled with joysticks, and they can interact with the slopes in the arena, as well as collide with the third ball. The gameplay is extremely bugged, though. The player-controlled balls can travel to the other player’s area by going through the goal area (it acts like a long tunnel)."

Ruben kindly as mentioned has passed on a previously unseen and more complete version of the game which is playable. This was as far as it got unfortunately, and its a shame – as the game looks nicely polished, if only of a simple theme.

But at the least the mystery behind this game has now been solved, and we can close the case on it. Check it out! Thanks to Slator for the tidied up version of the game!

Case closed!



http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/strobe/
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Subclavian  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1988 Unknown
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Rob Hubbard

An interesting looking game, which feels a bit like a mixture of Paradroid, Alien Syndrome and Citadel mixed together. Its not quite known exactly what was going to happen to this game, or what its finished state is…. maybe this is it?

The game is currently bugged which you are able to check out, as the droid seems able to move through walls and things. Though the actual game looks as if it could have been a nice release if actually finished off. There is little to do here, apart from blow up some nice green switch thingy’s on the walls.

The music is by Rob Hubbard, but looks as if it were ripped from another game, possibily temporarily until the game’s proper music was composed.

The game’s state is unknown at the moment…. there could possibly be a more completed version out there somewhere, though for now we can check this preview…

Does anyone know any more on this game?…

Contributions: Martin Holland


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/subclavian/
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Subterranean Stryker  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A surprise finding for GTW in 2012 was made when Richard Bayliss was checking through some loader source files from Paul Hughes’ disks that we backed up recently, and he came across a source code file named “Defender 2″.

Richard recalls about how he came across the game:

“I was browsing all the source disks I had difficulties viewing all of the loader sources on so many disks. I like to see some nostalgic loaders and how they were programmed, but I couldn’t get to grips with Commodore’s Assembler 64 to try and view/assemble the .src files to machine code programs.

However, I stumbled across a .D64 with the Zeus assembler, with some sources. I was tempted to check out the sources. Some were just scrolling messages. Then I tried loading in “DEFENDER 2″ source code into the assembler. I assembled the code to see what it was like. Well, the code assembled but I was missing the graphics files. So I tried loading in OBJECT, SCREEN 1, GRAFIX filenames, got back to the assembler and assembled the source. It turned out to be an unfinished game. So now I have put together the Defender game into one file, with an aid of a couple of tools, and now you can load and run it with pleasure  ”

When this was presented back to Paul Hughes, he was surprised that we had managed to dig out what was confirmed as a very early stage conversion of the little known Spectrum game, Subterranean Stryker. Paul shed some light on the game:

“The story behind the game, was that my local computer shop had a software house in the back – Insight Software. The first game that was being developed, for the spectrum, was a defender-a-like in caves called Subterranean Stryker, so I thought I’d show them a C64 version – the little ship was copied pixel by pixel from the Spectrum all the rest were rubbish little blocks that I cobbled together – not the spectrum maps.

Nothing came of it – in fact I’m pretty sure I never showed them it! Its not really a game its just a scroll and some (crappy) collision detection. I really had buried that one in the darkest recesses of my mind  )”

It is indeed not much to look at, and is a very early test preview with a ship and a scroll routine – but Paul very kindly allowed us to preserve waht remains of a rare conversion from the early days. Many thanks to Richard Bayliss for helping to preserve it!

Case closed!

Contributions: Richard Bayliss, Paul Hughes


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http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/subterranean-stryker/
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Super Breakout  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Super Mario Bros  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Super Pac Twins  SE
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A sad casulty from the mind of Paul Kubiszyn.

Super Pac Twins was hyped up in the pages of the later issues of Commodore Format, even featuring as a Diary Of A Game.

The classic Pacman concept was to be taken and updated with more sophisticated mazes and a two player mode.

The game was shaping up well, and Paul was getting there, when something quite bad happened. Commodore Format was going downhill, and was being ran by Simon Forrester, who put the demo on the powerpack without Paul’s permission (Paul had even written on the CD, "Not For Powerpack!" on it!

Paul was quite upset about this, and halted work on the game. Simon Forrester even slightly insulted the game, and invited readers of the magazine to send in their game ideas to improve on the game. Of course, this was just before CF’s demise, so I don’t know if anyone entered it.

Anyway, the game was shelved and the preview is pretty much all of what existed. However, recently, Richard Bayliss gained rights to take over the project and completed it, releasing it to the world for free, which we have now added to the download for posterity.

As to what Paul would have done and had as the final game is all but a dream now. A sad end to a promising little title, but some compenstation with the fact that Richard Bayliss finished off the game.

Interestingly though, the game concept was picked up by Paul again after about 6 months and turned into Twin Balls, which also didn’t get a release. Here you can also read Paul’s story about how SP was turned into the game and what happened.

Classic concept, almost making a fresh start… case closed…

Contributions: Charles Haley, Paul Kubiszyn

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Paul Kubiszyn speaks about work on Super Pac Twins...

"With regards to the text, yes it is all correct. Although my name is spelt, KUBISZYN :) but not
 to worry.

I was exteremly angry when CF published the demo without my concent. I can not stress how many times in silver pen I wrote over the CD "DO NOT USE ON CF COVERTAPE!!!!!!". It was the one and only reason for scrapping the project, after this there was no way this could ever have been
 a commercial success."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/super-pac-twins/
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Super Star-Force  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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An interesting version of Starforce, or so it seemed. X-Ample did both Starforce and Mega Starforce, with the later being released in 1993. This demo from 1994 seems to be a clone attempt of some sort.

Super Starforce is basically an Invaders clone, updated with nice graphics and extras. You could say that this is a Mega Starforce clone rather than an Invaders one directly.

Having a similiar look to the X-Ample games, Super Starforce features some nice samples for the sound effects, a nice backdrop and sprites. Its quite playable too, though not quite as polished as the X-Ample titles.

It’s unknown why this version never made it, maybe the samples made it difficult and there were problems with the code. What is interesting is that The Airwolf Team (Which Stefan was part of) released a proper remix edition of Mega Starforce – http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=3420

It seems that this game was cancelled after not quite working out, and so the guys remixed X-Ample’s game instead. We will need confirmation on this and why all of this was done etc..

Stefan Gutsch confirmed to GTW that he did the graphics and code. The game was never completed, and Stefan believed the game was rubbish. He has a version with a end of level boss, which hopefully GTW will be able to let you see someday…

Just to conclude – apologies to Seven for mislaying his original corrections to this review (After we mistakingly suggested that this was the prequel to Mega Starforce). All should be corrected now.

Nice blasting Sfx sadly never heard in a full version…

Contributions: Stefan Gutsch, Seven/Digital Excess


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/super-starforce/
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Supernatural  (Preview V3)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Sven-Goran Penalty  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Szczerbiec  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Take'Em Out   (Demo)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1988 REM Developments
Status: Preview, Findability: 1/5

Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

Our next title was a surprise finding on the disks of Dean Hickingbottom, and was likely sent to Video Images for evaluation.

It is a very very early Operation Wolf clone with little interactivity at this stage, but looks like it could have been a fun budget title in the making.

We have no idea who was behind it, though it was found on a disk with the name ‘REM DEVELOPMENTS’.  There was also the following note:

Missing levels 2,3+4
Collision Detection in but disabled as slight bug!
Graphics, score, sound effects etc
+ light gun to go in.
Memory is a shit!!
Fucking Zeus!!

More information needed – if you know anything about this game, then please get in touch!

Contributions: Dean Hickingbottom


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/take-em-out/
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Tarzan Goes Ape V1   (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
*
1991 Codemasters
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Dave Saunders (?)
Graphics: Ashley Routledge
Sound: N/A

Quite often when doing GTW64, we get a number of shocks and surprises that crop up, and none more than when we found a PDS disk with Tarzan Goes Ape written on it within Ashley Routledge’s disk collection.

Started around the 16th November 1990, then stopped it seems on the 22nd November – not a huge amount was done, but there was at least 1 or 2 levels and a main character that you could sort of control.   There are plenty of glitches, as things are really at a very early stage.   Use keys Q and A to scroll the map up and down.

It looks great, and although the final released game was pretty good in its own right, you wonder how good this version could have been.   The game was indeed being developed by Ash and Dave, but its unknown if it was just Ash or both the duo working on it.

Oddly neither recall anything about the development and were surprised to hear about it.  The short time span possibly being a good reason for forgetting.   As a result, we don’t know exactly why the game was canned early on – was it maybe a pitch for Codemasters after seeing the Spectrum edition?   Did they get a better offer from another company to do another game?   We may not ever find out unfortunately.

As mentioned earlier, the game did eventually get a release by a different programmer – around late 1991!  So almost a year since the original edition.  Here it is if you want to compare.. http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=7774&d=18&h=0

Something certainly happened – maybe you know more?

For now, check out the final remains of the conversion that never was, for a glimpse of a game that could have been very different!

Contributions: Ashley Routledge, Martin Pugh, Jazzcat


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/tarzan-goes-ape-v1/
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Terradyne Warrior  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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v 1.1

Coming soon..

Comment:
Game Over(view) Freestyle Jam
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Tetris (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Throne of Fire  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Well, let me begin… Throne of Fire was to be published by Melbourne House, and indeed was published on both the Spectrum and Amstrad and well recieved – but the C64 version went walkies…

The game was by Mike Singleton and was a graphic adventure where the action took place across 100 rooms of the Burning Citadel. The objective was to seize the power of the Citadel; achieved by a player taking his Prince to the Throne Room after disposing of the other two Princes. On gaining the Throne, that Prince then would become King, power would be his and the crown presented.

The game came with a split screen display where up to two players could play, or a single player against the computer. It was very much a medievil Spy Vs Spy game, with the Princes able to pick up various weapons and fight when they met in a room.

So after various adverts, what happened to the Commodore 64 version?… Chris Pink got in touch with GTW and told us that he did the Amstrad version of the game. It was found that Tim Rogers and Darrin Stubbington (Stoat and Tim) were infact behind the conversion on the C64… one of their first big titles.

GTW got hold of Darrin Stubbington, thanks to Craig Grannell, and found that the game had not been complete. One castle was up and running with a character running about. The game was basically very hard to be copied from the Spectrum and Amstrad due to some of their particular hardware strengths, so there were some changes. Darrin informed GTW that Tim Rogers was the coder and where he could be found.

Eventually, we managed to find Tim and we asked him about the game… Imagine our surprise when the reply that comes back has an attachment with all the remains of the game! The files were broken, but Glenn Rune Gallefoss has very kindly helped fix everything for GTW… A big thank you required in Glenn’s direction  

The preview that we have features a loading/title screen, and also a playable early preview showing two screens and controllable characters. It’s not really playable at this early stage, but you can get a general feel and see that it seemed to be shaping up very nicely. You will notice that the split has been done horizontally rather than vertically, but it works well. There is no music, but could Rob Hubbard have stepped in? … we may never know.

It is a huge finding for GTW and another big title preserved. We are unsure why the game never got finished and released, but we believe that the game was delayed due to the problems that Stoat and Tim had, and thanks to the delay – Melbourne House learned that the game was not a run away success like they hoped, and thus they cancelled it. Not a bad theory? (Well, Tim and Darrin cannot remember why exactly, so we have to guess  )

An open and closed case… sit back and see what could have been…

Contributions: Glenn Rune Gallefoss, Chris Pink, Darrin Stubbington, Tim Rogers, Mat Allen


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/throne-of-fire/
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Thunder Light  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Thunder Zone  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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This is a promising looking preview of a game which reminds me slightly of Cyberdyne Warrior. Its a nice preview, with some fair (If jumbled) graphics in places. The main sprite moves very well and in places the graphics look nice, like in the shop screen. The preview features no sound, and it has recently come to light about the game’s existance thanks to its coder, Kevin Murphy.

You may remember Kevin for his game "Thrustaball" which appeared on ZZap’s covertape back in the early 90′s. Kevin created a variety of good quality games, but sadly never got the break he deserved.

After/during the new incarnation of Thrustaball to be sold abroad (Mega Thrustaball), Kevin was working on Thunderzone, which was probably his most ambitious of his game creations. Various levels and bits were created with the intention of probably going Multiload.

As quoted from "Creator Speaks", Kevin describes the game… "The idea of the game, was basically to trudge about the various levels shooting at and blowing up various unstable nuclear reactors, using teleports to zip about the level and shooting aliens and collecting pickups and credits to spend on weapon upgrades in a shop."

The game was sent to Legendary Designs on various occasions in its various forms for playtesting, and feedback was given for improvements etc.

The game got to quite an advanced state, more advanced than what can be seen from this "Very early preview", as Kevin describes it. Later it had a full working shop, fully upgradable weapons, aliens and sfx. There was also a variety of levels created too.

Unfortunately, due to Mega Thrustaball not being sold and Kevin not recieving the payment he was due, he lost heart in the project and scrapped it. So at the time just an advanced preview existed (Near to completion). The game was later to resurface in 1997 under another programmer taking the helm. (This also got scrapped and no further progress was really made).

Kevin sadly does not have any of his work any longer, though there are two places to look.

For one, Legendary Designs will have a later preview if members still exist. A developer called Michael Reichmuth, who worked on Thunderzone and started up the project again in 1997, is also someone else who is likely to have the later versions. Other than that, Kevin mentioned a friend who possibly may have still had copies of all his work… and guess what!…. He DID!….

Jason Steele had very luckily kept all his disks from 20 odd years ago, and still had all of Kevin’s old work and has very kindly backed it all up and preserved it for Kevin!… Kevin has released all of the new work, and now GTW has added the extra bits to the archive 
 too.

You can now find some new bits in the download link!  …. The new version, includes aliens, the ability to purchase new weapons and 2 levels. There were actualy 3 levels designed but Kevin is pretty sure the third level is now lost forever.

 Now included in the zip file are 2 new .d64 files. The file T1.d64 contains the game v2.prg file, this is level 2 of the game. The file T2.d64 contains the TZ Demo.prg file and this is a version of level 1 of the game, with player to alien collision detection disabled and maximum credits, so the player can purchase all the weapons and explore the level. There are also editors and bits which were used for the game, and also a logo of somekind for the game.

Some fantastic findings, and we are very glad to add these to the archive with this preview!… A big thanks to Jason Steele for helping preserve more of Kevin’s game!….

Contributions: Kevin Murphy, Michael Reichmuth, Jason Steele

---

Kevin Murphy speaks to GTW about work on Thunderzone and his past...

"I had written several games before Thunderzone, trying to break into the games industry but not having much luck. I had written 3 games previously called, Thrusterball, Rainbow Chaser and Zytron.

Having had these games rejected by various publishers i decided to try and sell them myself as a 3 game package via an advert in zzap64.

I made only a handful of sales with that advert at the time but it did introduce me to a company in Belgium called Legendary Designs. A fellow by the name of Ben Hermans wrote to me saying how impressed with the games he was and how he would like to try and improve on Thrusterball by adding some music and a front end and then trying to find a publisher for this new improved version.

This i agreed to and in due course the game enhancements were made and the game was re titled Mega Thrusterball.

After i had completed my version of the game and after being rejected by various publishers i decided to throw away the source code for the game as i thought it wouldn't be needed anymore. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake as Ben Hermans kept writing to me asking for the source code as he needed prove the game was his to sell.

Anyway, after various phone calls and letters back and forth from the UK to Belgium i was eventually informed that a publisher had been found for the game and payment would be forwarded to an account of mine in due course.

This was the last i ever heard from Legendary Designs and Ben Hermans. I didn't see any payment for the game or received any further correspondence. After being rejected by various publishers and now being blatantly ripped off ( as i saw it ) you can imagine i was rather depressed.

During all this correspondence. time with Legendary Design's i was writing a new game which i decided to call Thunderzone. I sent various versions off to legendary Designs for play testing and feedback and they were quite helpful in making suggestions and seemed quite keen on taking the game on and finding a publishing as they did with Thrusterball. I had made several levels for the game which i intended to be a multi load, although i hadn't written any disk or tape IO routines yet.

I consider this game along with another of mine as my best c64 work and my most ambitious.

I idea of the game, was basically to trudge about the various levels shooting at and blowing up various unstable nuclear reactors, using teleports to zip about the level and shooting aliens and collecting pickups and credits to spend on weapon upgrades in a shop. I actually thought the game was a bit monotonous to play, but that's probably due to all the play testing that i did with it but various friends seem to enjoy playing it.

Again i sent off various demo's of the game to publishers and i was met with un interest by most. I remember the most promising feedback i had was from Mastertronic, who just asked me to forward my CV to them which i didn't bother doing. They had rejected my game and that's all i cared about at the time. I had a lot of fun writing the game but as you can imagine i lost interest after the Thrusterball incident and didn't bother completing it.

I don't own any source code for any of my games now but i do have a friend who might. He used to collect all sorts of bit's and pieces and knowing he was a fellow coder too he might still have something. It's a tall order though as many years have passed since writing the game.

And as i recall i placed a cheat mode in the shop section for 9999999 worth of credits to buy any weapon. I think it was simply a case of clicking the cursor on various parts of the shopkeeper, like his eyes etc. Although i've not yet tried it in the version available for download on your site.

The preview version of Thunderzone available on your site is actually a very early version. Probably version 1 i sent to Legendary Designs. The game i remember was at a quite advanced state, with a full working shop, fully upgradable weapons, aliens and sfx and 3 or 4 different levels too. A bit disappointing that only the early version exists at present.

It's quite amazing that in that preview there appears various credits such as Code by Fletch and Doc and copyright Virtual Life etc. LOL, That's all news to me. I've no idea who Fletch and Doc are, i guess the front end coders and i've never heard of Virtual Life either. lol.

I hope that sheds some small amount of light of the game. :)

I am still programming games and demo's on the pc to this day. Just as a hobby. I never did make it into the games industry as a pro. Life takes some funny turns.

And i must praise you on an amazing web site You've brought back a lot of very very good memories for me. Damn i loved the C64. A great machine."



http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/thunderzone/
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Thunderball  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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It isn’t quite known yet, but possibly this is another unfinished X-Ample relic from the past.

This time we have a futuristic one on one game where you have to get the ball into the opponents goal by pushing the ball with your main ship. Basically a top down version of Ballblazer.

Graphically, the game is typical of that of a X-Ample release, which is why the question hangs over if this is actually by them.

Sonically there is no sound or music at all… which is something which could have later been added by Thomas Detert. There is currently nothing in HVSC which can link this game to X-Ample.

The game itself is quite playable, though possibly lacking a lot of features that a full game would have. Certainly a variety of backdrops would be there I would have thought. Some of the gameplay in places is a little grany. Overall it could be around 70% complete at this stage.

I’m not sure how well this works. Certainly without a split screen like Ball Blazer, some of the atmopshere is lost. Maybe the game was scrapped due to some technicalities with the game. It is not a terrible game, its not original either… but it is a quality looking game which sadly didn’t make it.

It is unknown if there was a publisher intended for the game, but i’d hazard a guess at Magic Disk or some German company being intended for this game. We just need to know who was behind this game.

Is there more to this?… we don’t know.

A nice little two player game…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/thunder-ball/
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Thunderzone  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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1998 Virtual Life
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Kevin Murphy
Graphics: Kevin Murphy
Sound: Unknown & n/a

This is a promising looking preview of a game which reminds me slightly of Cyberdyne Warrior. Its a nice preview, with some fair (If jumbled) graphics in places. The main sprite moves very well and in places the graphics look nice, like in the shop screen. The preview features no sound, and it has recently come to light about the game’s existance thanks to its coder, Kevin Murphy.

You may remember Kevin for his game "Thrustaball" which appeared on ZZap’s covertape back in the early 90’s. Kevin created a variety of good quality games, but sadly never got the break he deserved.

After/during the new incarnation of Thrustaball to be sold abroad (Mega Thrustaball), Kevin was working on Thunderzone, which was probably his most ambitious of his game creations. Various levels and bits were created with the intention of probably going Multiload.

As quoted from "Creator Speaks", Kevin describes the game… "The idea of the game, was basically to trudge about the various levels shooting at and blowing up various unstable nuclear reactors, using teleports to zip about the level and shooting aliens and collecting pickups and credits to spend on weapon upgrades in a shop."

The game was sent to Legendary Designs on various occasions in its various forms for playtesting, and feedback was given for improvements etc.

The game got to quite an advanced state, more advanced than what can be seen from this "Very early preview", as Kevin describes it. Later it had a full working shop, fully upgradable weapons, aliens and sfx. There was also a variety of levels created too.

Unfortunately, due to Mega Thrustaball not being sold and Kevin not recieving the payment he was due, he lost heart in the project and scrapped it. So at the time just an advanced preview existed (Near to completion). The game was later to resurface in 1997 under another programmer taking the helm. (This also got scrapped and no further progress was really made).

Kevin sadly does not have any of his work any longer, though there are two places to look.

For one, Legendary Designs will have a later preview if members still exist. A developer called Michael Reichmuth, who worked on Thunderzone and started up the project again in 1997, is also someone else who is likely to have the later versions. Other than that, Kevin mentioned a friend who possibly may have still had copies of all his work… and guess what!…. He DID!….

Jason Steele had very luckily kept all his disks from 20 odd years ago, and still had all of Kevin’s old work and has very kindly backed it all up and preserved it for Kevin!… Kevin has released all of the new work, and now GTW has added the extra bits to the archive 
too.

You can now find some new bits in the download link! :-) …. The new version, includes aliens, the ability to purchase new weapons and 2 levels. There were actualy 3 levels designed but Kevin is pretty sure the third level is now lost forever.

Now included in the zip file are 2 new .d64 files. The file T1.d64 contains the game v2.prg file, this is level 2 of the game. The file T2.d64 contains the TZ Demo.prg file and this is a version of level 1 of the game, with player to alien collision detection disabled and maximum credits, so the player can purchase all the weapons and explore the level. There are also editors and bits which were used for the game, and also a logo of somekind for the game.

Some fantastic findings, and we are very glad to add these to the archive with this preview!… A big thanks to Jason Steele for helping preserve more of Kevin’s game!….

Contributions: Kevin Murphy, Michael Reichmuth, Jason Steele

---

Kevin Murphy speaks to GTW about work on Thunderzone and his past...

"I had written several games before Thunderzone, trying to break into the games industry but not having much luck. I had written 3 games previously called, Thrusterball, Rainbow Chaser and Zytron.

Having had these games rejected by various publishers i decided to try and sell them myself as a 3 game package via an advert in zzap64.

I made only a handful of sales with that advert at the time but it did introduce me to a company in Belgium called Legendary Designs. A fellow by the name of Ben Hermans wrote to me saying how impressed with the games he was and how he would like to try and improve on Thrusterball by adding some music and a front end and then trying to find a publisher for this new improved version.

This i agreed to and in due course the game enhancements were made and the game was re titled Mega Thrusterball.

After i had completed my version of the game and after being rejected by various publishers i decided to throw away the source code for the game as i thought it wouldn't be needed anymore. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake as Ben Hermans kept writing to me asking for the source code as he needed prove the game was his to sell.

Anyway, after various phone calls and letters back and forth from the UK to Belgium i was eventually informed that a publisher had been found for the game and payment would be forwarded to an account of mine in due course.

This was the last i ever heard from Legendary Designs and Ben Hermans. I didn't see any payment for the game or received any further correspondence. After being rejected by various publishers and now being blatantly ripped off ( as i saw it ) you can imagine i was rather depressed.

During all this correspondence. time with Legendary Design's i was writing a new game which i decided to call Thunderzone. I sent various versions off to legendary Designs for play testing and feedback and they were quite helpful in making suggestions and seemed quite keen on taking the game on and finding a publishing as they did with Thrusterball. I had made several levels for the game which i intended to be a multi load, although i hadn't written any disk or tape IO routines yet.

I consider this game along with another of mine as my best c64 work and my most ambitious.

I idea of the game, was basically to trudge about the various levels shooting at and blowing up various unstable nuclear reactors, using teleports to zip about the level and shooting aliens and collecting pickups and credits to spend on weapon upgrades in a shop. I actually thought the game was a bit monotonous to play, but that's probably due to all the play testing that i did with it but various friends seem to enjoy playing it.

Again i sent off various demo's of the game to publishers and i was met with un interest by most. I remember the most promising feedback i had was from Mastertronic, who just asked me to forward my CV to them which i didn't bother doing. They had rejected my game and that's all i cared about at the time. I had a lot of fun writing the game but as you can imagine i lost interest after the Thrusterball incident and didn't bother completing it.

I don't own any source code for any of my games now but i do have a friend who might. He used to collect all sorts of bit's and pieces and knowing he was a fellow coder too he might still have something. It's a tall order though as many years have passed since writing the game.

And as i recall i placed a cheat mode in the shop section for 9999999 worth of credits to buy any weapon. I think it was simply a case of clicking the cursor on various parts of the shopkeeper, like his eyes etc. Although i've not yet tried it in the version available for download on your site.

The preview version of Thunderzone available on your site is actually a very early version. Probably version 1 i sent to Legendary Designs. The game i remember was at a quite advanced state, with a full working shop, fully upgradable weapons, aliens and sfx and 3 or 4 different levels too. A bit disappointing that only the early version exists at present.

It's quite amazing that in that preview there appears various credits such as Code by Fletch and Doc and copyright Virtual Life etc. LOL, That's all news to me. I've no idea who Fletch and Doc are, i guess the front end coders and i've never heard of Virtual Life either. lol.

I hope that sheds some small amount of light of the game. :)

I am still programming games and demo's on the pc to this day. Just as a hobby. I never did make it into the games industry as a pro. Life takes some funny turns.

And i must praise you on an amazing web site You've brought back a lot of very very good memories for me. Damn i loved the C64. A great machine."

Kevin Murphy.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/thunderzone/
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Time Crystal  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1985 Sachs Enterprise
Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Jim Sachs
Graphics: Jim Sachs
Sound: Unknown

Its not often we get a new game to add to the archive which is from way back in 1985…

As you can see, the game’s graphics are gorgeous, and way ahead of their time for a C64…. now I could imagine the graphic rating of this being around 100% in Zzap 64…. :)….

Some really lovely animations in the preview, with a really nice intro with some eery music to go with it. Its kinda like a Paul Norman game, with nice graphics.

Its a very small preview…. and it seems to be very bugged…. and when you die, you cannot restart (or can you?)… but all in all, it looked very promising.

The game was started by Jim Sachs and never finished. As you will see from the demo, he did excellent graphics work, but he quickly left the C64 for the Amiga. Apparently he went on to work at Cinemaware.

The game never progressed further than the preview here, basically Jim tells GTW that piracy in the C64 market made him realize that it wasn’t worth finishing the project.

Hopefully Jim will shed some light some day on his old production… Now Jim is famous for producing some brilliant Fish Tank simulators. A recent interview was also done with Jim which you can find here and talks about the title.   ( http://www.pcmuseum.ca/sachs1.asp )

Case closed, this is it with Time Crystal…

Contributions: Bayban, Jim Sachs



http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/time-crystal/
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Toddlerplane  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Tower snake  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Troddlers  (Preview v2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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1993 Storm
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Enno van Amerongen
Graphics: Nikaj Eijk
Sound: Martijn Schutten

Lemmings had just been finished, and then the average Amiga game popped up in the scene news about its conversion being worked on. It was basically lemmings which climbed EVERYWHERE. This was first mentioned in Commodore Force, towards the end of its shelf life.

To my surprise, the preview was easily obtainable from the internet, and it was found that the game was actually being worked on by one of the guy’s behind SCS-TRC.

It is a very impressive looking preview, consisting of a very faithful conversion of the original Amiga game, and some awesome graphics and music (By the guy who did the preview music to Lemmings).

The game got scrapped by Storm/Sales Curve as the C64’s life drew to a close, and so it never got completed. It was I guess pretty suicidal timing for a C64 commercial release.  The game’s author recently mentioned that they actually had a contract from Sales Curve, but due to the dwindling market, they were only offered royalties.  Due to the amount of work still to be completed, the decided to can it.

Anyway, this is all that is made of the game… there was nothing more, so i’ve been told.

However, although that was thought to be it … some 14 years later, the game was resurrected by the developer.  Without the source code still, the game was reverse engineered and a new improved preview was released at X2012, featuring improved controls and a lot of bugs fixed.

It is now planned for the game to actually be completed properly – and Enno is asking for a graphics artist who wants to help finish the game.  We could finally see Troddlers on the C64!

Exciting developments – check out the preview which we have added here!

Contributions: Success and the Ruling Company
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Turn Change  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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1995 Mystery Arts
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Zoran Zambo
Graphics: David Vigh
Sound: Andor Cseh

Yet another puzzler in production for the C64, and unfortunatly very similar to many other puzzlers which have been on the C64 already.

Nice colourful graphics, but that is about it. Nothing much else new to offer in the way of gameplay.

Interestingly in 2010 I had an email from David Vigh who corrected our credits and passed us on some other versions of Turn Change. Very oddly in the preview, the credits are not correct.

Unfortunately, although we have a intro picture and a working title screen – the actual game itself is not fully working. There should be a slightly different version of the puzzle game with a different background image to check out at least. Hopefully in the future we may be able to get these fixed up.

The game was posted to Gremlin Graphics by Zoran Zambo in the early 90’s, but must have been rejected. After this we are not sure what happened – there seems to have been some kind of attempt to revive the game in the mid-90’s, but things died out again.

How far did the game get before it was cancelled is the big question? Hopefully David will be able to shed some light soon…

Another puzzling puzzle for GTW to solve…

Contributions: David Vigh


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/turn-change/
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Turrican III (Preview 2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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*
Ask a C64 user what their top 10 games are, and you’ll often find Turrican or Turrican 2 high up there. Although Turrican 2 was Manfred Trenz’s last Turrican effort on the C64, this did not deter fans of the game to create their own sequel in years to come.

Games were slowly drying up towards the end of the 90′s, but one or two gems were promised… such as Turrican 3 from Protovision. Rumours of development were spread like wildfire on the C64 scene, but then suddenly a preview appeared unexpectidly, much to Protovision’s dismay…It seems that while the game was being demonstrated at a party, someone stole the disk and spread the game preview around.

It was this sad gesture from the C64 scene which prompted the game’s developers Stefan Gutsch and Chester Kollschen to cancel the game production. Ironically at the same time, Factor 5, who were developing Turrican on other systems threatened legal action against the game. So it was doomed anyway… but maybe in recent times it would have been finished off had they not lost heart in the game due to one person who stole the disk.The game itself is a very faithful update of Turrican, featuring flicker free sprites and even music as the game played!… something not thought possible even by Manfred Trenz.

A few levels were done before the game was cancelled, with one or two large monsters (which looked very impressive). Overall the production looked very promising.Around the same time, Smash Designs started producing their own version of Turrican 3, and in 2004 they finally finished it. Possibly some ideas from Protovision’s version were used as inspiration, but at least a Turrican 3 did make it in the end. Would two versions have been completed had Protovision not had their disk stolen, and didn’t have Factor 5 on their backs?

The preview has been floating around the net for some time, but recently Protovision have been spreading all the remains of Turrican 3 with their other sold products for people to see.

Jazzcat has kindly passed on these remains for GTW to preserve and show some of you for the first time too. Now you can see for yourself the potential of this conversion.

Also check out the words from Protovision, as mentioned on their website.

Case closed…

Contributions: Success and the Ruling Company


---


Protovision talk about work on Turrican 3 V1...

At this time, about 1997, Stefan Gutsch met Chester Kollschen, creator of the top games Ice Guys and Bomb Mania. Both coders had always dreamed of creating a Turrican-like game. The idea of an (inofficial) successor of Turrican I and II was born. To get every C64 user the chance to play the game, it was decided not to require the SuperCPU for this one.

Now Stefan could concentrate on what he can do best, great graphics and creative level design. Chester started with the hard work of programming the game, workname "Turrican 3". The goal was to be not only as good as but even better than the predecessors.

Finally music had been implemented, the end monsters got bigger and absolutely flicker free - using a completely new designed multiplex routine. The game could even load data while one could move the player.

n 1998, the project was presented to a small bunch of people during a scene party. But during the night, the disk was stolen and the half completed game was spread around the internet. Shocked by the fact that such things could happen even in the fantastic C64 scene, Chester cancelled the work. Simultaneously, Factor 5, makers of the "Turrican" games on Amiga, threatened because of copyright issues. .




http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/turrican-3-v1/
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Twin Balls  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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1995 XLCUS

Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5
Coding: Paul Kubiszyn
Graphics: Paul Kubiszyn
Sound: Paul Kubiszyn

I’m kind of surprised we didn’t have an entry for this game sooner in GTW64. This is another Paul Kubiszyn game which never saw the light of day and was being developed around the time Commodore Format were still going (just!)

Very strangely, this is very very similiar to Super Pac Twins which Paul was developing at the same time. That was a more simplistic game where you just ate dots in a maze like Pac Man, but Twin Balls expands on the idea by making it more of a Pengiun Towers clone with sliding tiles and other bits. It’s actually a far better game!

Well, basically Paul informs us that after CF put Super Pac Twins on the covermount without permission – he canned that game. The demo released was just for screenshot purposes, but CF may have been desperate for covermount content. Not to be put off, Twin Balls was a re-use of the concept that was canned, but with added elements to move it away from a standard Pac Man clone.

In total, two previews were released – and the game never got finished due to real life kicking in and other projects (See Creator Speaks). We assume that Paul just lost interest in the game before going onto doing the likes of ?Interlaced Pairs as his final swan song on the C64.

Nothing more was ever produced, so check out the creator speaks for input from Paul himself about the game…

Case closed!

Contributions: Paul Kubiszyn

---

Paul Kubiszyn talks about Twin Balls...

"SPT was being developed by myself with creative input from my brother Mark, and was the intension that the final full game would appear on the CF covertape. Although it was discussed that at some later stage in time we would provide CF with a demo, the one which they ran with was not the demo and no permission was given for them to use it, in fact we didn't know anything about its inclusion until we saw it on the covertape like everyone else.

The very early developer preview which they were provided with was only for the benefit of allowing them to grab screen shots for inclusion alongside the magazine diary article. I guess by the last issues they were having trouble filling the covertape, or wanted to avoid paying out any money for the covertape.

I think it was either six months or a year afterwards that I thought of resurrecting the project. My thoughts were to sell the game myself. Although the advertising from the CF articles may have helped, I considered the demo inclusion on the covertape enough to put people off and therefore a name change was decided upon. I think at the time I may also have been worried about a title already existing with the name Super Pac Twins, but don't quote me on that as we didn't have the large internet archive we have these days back then.

Twin Balls was used as the game was intended to be for 1-2 players at the same time. At the time I was heavily influenced by the likes of Penguin Towers, Bomberman, and of course wanted to add in the Pacman element also of collecting pills. I still think that a game today would be great to feature all those elements in one go. My only real memories of developing Twin Balls were the music (which is available I think in the HSVC collection) and the wondering how I was going to program the handling of multiple bombs with multiple players and how each would interact with each other :) That's why in the demo you can only lay a single bomb, I simply hadn't got that far yet.

As for why it was shelved, I think it was around this time I started full time employment and gradually the C64 became less a part of my life. Today my work (and child) still consume all of my spare time, allowing only the following of the scene on Facebook, Twitter and online etc. In a small way though, through Facebook I still feel part of a scene and love the C64 community. One day the time will come for a return! - I hope soon to introduce my little 3 year old girl to the fun of the C64 :)"


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/twin-balls/
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Tycoon Tex  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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1985 Gremlin Graphics
Status: No Download, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Anthony Clarke
Graphics: Anthony Clarke
Sound: N/A

Recently,  Mark Hardisty has launched a website full of memorabilia in preparation for the launch of his new A Gremlin In The Works book.

Part of this included source code files which were donated by Anthony J Clarke, which included some C64 source files for two Gremlin Graphics games – Dork’s Dilemma and Tycoon Tex. Hokuto Force have pieced everything together and have made these available for people to check out in an emulation form.

Tycoon Tex is pretty much the C16 game code and graphics, with no hardware sprites used. It is essentially a complete conversion, but with no sound.

The game was constructed on the C64, and then wired down to the C16 to run and compile.  This is why a C64 version of the code was available, which could be compiled to get running – but the intention was always for a C16 only title.

Overall, it is a great piece of history preserved thanks to Anthony, Mark Hardisty and Hokuto Force.  Check it out!

Contributions: Anthony Clarke, Hokuto Force, Mark Hardisty


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/tycoon-tex/
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Tyger! Tyger!  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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This graphically superb clone of Capcom’s Black Tiger was in production by Gary Liddon of Zzap fame, and also Paul (Dokk) Docherty of various artistic efforts.

The game looked great in the adverts, and the screenshots looked very tasty for the fellow game player.

Sadly the game was so similiar to Black Tiger that publishers Firebird were apparently running scared, because of the hassle that Us-Gold had with Nintendo and Activision over Giana and Katakis respectively. So to save money and hassle, the game was scrapped. It is also rumoured that Gary was slow with developing the game, and this is why not much was done in the time period of the game’s development.

From a discussion long ago with Gary Liddon, Jazzcat found that the game was never finished, and that there was a demo somewhere. Gary unfortunatly didn’t have it and Dokk didn’t either.. So who did?… Well, someone did… and a pretty nigh complete version too…

TMR/Cosine kindly donated GTW a file from Firebird’s development system (PDS), which contained all the remaining source code for Tyger Tyger, at about 50% completion state. Gary Liddon actually sent TMR this file many moons ago, which Gary may have forgot about… Possibly Gary thought someone else could finish it.

For a while now, Jani Tahvanainen and Henrik Jansson have been examining the PDS file, and have managed to extract all the source code, and have been sifting slowly through the code and trying to put it all together.

And after a long hard slog.. GTW is now finally able to present you with a first ever release of the game thanks to these two great guys. A few people doubted whether we’d ever see Tyger Tyger even after the PDS turning up, but now you can see for yourselves what a mightily fine job they have done.

With what was pretty much like piecing together a million piece jigsaw, Tyger Tyger is finally here after a 15 year wait.. From what is seen, it is pretty much playable, though the game was only ever 50% complete… it still contains fantastic graphics and animations and overall about 4 levels approximately. It must be applauded for the incredible work that Jani and Henrik have done here… they have essentially saved a long awaited title for our C64, and I hope sincerley that they get the recognition and praise for this fantastic work!

Even one level got very badly corrupted, but Jani and Henrik luckily managed to salvage the majority of it and restore it back to its former glory, thanks to the scans on the GTW pages. It is to be noted that the game features a lot of bugs from its production days, and its possible to get stuck in the background etc. But there are a number of options and keys available to allow you to explore what was Tyger Tyger. You will be able to see for yourselves, that had this game been finished, it would have been a class act. Just look at some of the graphics and animations by Dokk to see why.

We recently in 2013 found a preview scan from Commodore User magazine, which shows the first level with a moon behind the trees.  This cannot be found within the previews, so there may be more to find of the game in the future, or this is something just not activated in the game.

You will notice that there is no sound at all in the game.  In 2012, a note from Charles Deenen was temporarily leaked which had a Maniacs of Noise release list from 1988 time.  Listed was Tyger Tyger – suggesting that Maniacs of Noise were to do the SFX and tunes for the game had it been completed.   The only tune that may have been meant for the game is Disco China by Charles Deenen.

So what are you waiting for?… Download a piece of history. Gary Liddon’s legendary game has now come home at last…

Yet another major title found, and another case closed…

Contributions: Jazzcat, Jason Kelk, Gary Liddon, Conny Melin, Jani Tahvanainen, Henrik Jansson




http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/tyger-tyger/
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Undead  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A rather ambitious title which sadly never made it as more current life commitments came about.

This was to be a cross between Narc, Splatterhouse and Final Fight, featuring some nice graphics similiar to those in Rubicon, and over 200 frames of animation. The bitmaps were quite large, so the 1541 had to be hacked quite well to load in the graphics at good speed. Music was composed for the game and worked very well with the game. The game was being produced around 1990/1991 time.

It took about a year to come up with a fully playable level of a game which was very ambitious to say the least. It was demoed to people, but no-one really picked up the project, and eventually it was realised that the game was just TOO ambitious to be created for the C64, especially for the tape market!

GTW first learnt about the game back in 2006, and things stalled a little with the fixing of the game to present to you due to real life commitments.

But in December 2010, GTW is finally proud to present you with all the remains to Undead. This includes a specially produced slideshow and tidied up and running version of the game by Conrad! The slideshow in particular is superb!

Thankfully you get to play the first level so you can get the chance to see how things were. Overall its quite like Splatterhouse more than the others! Although there are glitches and things are not quite complete, it is quite fun to play and pick up objects and there is a large amount of controls to know. Here is an overview from the author:

INSTRUCTIONS
 Use joystick in port 2

Fire – hit / fire gun / use item / throw, it will alter on three different hits. If zombie is close, player will grab it and hold.
 Left / Right – move forward or backward. Hold fire to turn
 Up – pick item from the wall (not useful in this demo)
 Down – pick item / crouch (fire when crouch will activate the kick)
 Space – use gun / put gun away

Tips: You can use zombie as club, let them come close and press fire to grab, if you hold fire and press left / right, Jon Plissken will wield zombie
 You can take up to three bites, then Jon will fall down and lose a life. He will get up when you move the joystick

When playing the demo, some frames are not visible when moving left, unfortunately. Game will load up 16-colour bitmap screens while you walk, but there are only few of them. After the graphics run out, you will only see garbled mess.

Additionally there is a music demo which you can run and several story files. We have also included all the work disks with picture files and the original loader materials supplied from Miha, incase you want to have a sift through.

Overall it is a huge shame that this game never quite made it, as it looked to have a lot of promise. Maybe if the game was done in a slightly different way, it could have been released by a big company back in the day and done well. Still, thankfully the game has survived and now you can check things out for yourself!

Also check out what the authors had to say in Creator Speaks, but also enjoy the game and pics!  

Here at last and case closed!…

Contributions: Pekka, Miha, Conrad

---

Miha Rinne and Pekka speak about work on Undead...

"Undead was my first project I collaborated with a programmer. I was responsible for game design and artwork. The way I designed it was gleefully amateurish; I simply wanted it to be the epitome of everything I felt was cool at the time; (especially Splatterhouse coin-op and the movie 'Escape from New York'). So Undead was to be a mix of all these things.

We planned this to be a cartridge/1541 release, and few collaborators for the project were Sami Louko/Proton, who did the original disk loader routine which loaded more backgrounds while progressing, and Petri Reimann/Anvil, who did a great title tune. AMJ also collaborated with a
 fantastic tune.

It took us a year to come up with a playable level, once we had that we sent it to Jukka Tapanimäki and asked if he could share some publisher contacts. Answer never came, but I think he was already retired at the time. I didn't yet know Stavros at the time, but when I showed him this demo years later, he just commented: 'Well. Someones have clearly had to code lot of animation there.' (he was never particularly flattering when it came to c64 products from other developers)

I got very fond memories on working on this game. What was great about Pekka that he was always able to somehow figure a way on how to do a feature I requested. I "did" have some idea on the basics what c-64 can do (8 sprites for horizontal maximum, etc) but I didn't really know how
 hard it was to code it all in. But he was like a miracle man; I asked something, he did it! I don't think I ever had a collaborator like that ever since!

Anyway, it was certainly way too ambitious and it would have been a nightmare to complete, so it was just left to, eh, rot, until now when Triad contacted us and said they wanted to rescue it. This made us excited enough to dig through all the old archives again. What's maybe the best thing is that we still got all the workable source code, so if someone feels brave (or maybe mad) enough, they can try to develop this further. I can still make additional graphics and I still got all the original tools and equipment left, plus the design ideas and notes."

Miha Rinne. 
 May, 2006

"Undead was a game project that I participated in some 16 years ago. With great graphics and some nice technical tricks to it, the game had great potential. I still admire the graphics, especially the backgrounds, and some details like the hearts indicating player energy level. Technically it would have been impressive too, I'm not sure if anyone has ever done a C64 game with scrolling bitmaps as background graphics. Atleast I had not heard of such game way back then.

Programming the thing was challenging, with endless timing issues and the like. At some point I had to migrate programming work to Amiga, as compiling was just too slow on C64 due to large amount of source code that was involved. Actually one of the biggest problems was that the source was growing too big, it would not fit into the memory. Apparently I had'nt yet discovered that projects can have multiple source files, or maybe I just needed some excuse to buy more hardware ;)

Unfortunately the project was way too ambitious for two teenagers to complete, and the project was abandoned. But now after being buried for 15 years it seems that the Undead will live up to it's name. The dead walk!"


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/undead/
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Under the Ground  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Under The Ground
199? Mist Brains
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Marcin Ossowski
Graphics: Tomasz Maronski
Sound: Marcin Kubica

Mutton dressed as lamb here with this next preview.

"Under The Ground" is covered up by some nice graphics, but is only hiding the fact that this game is nothing but a simple game where you collect falling rocks into a wagon.

Much better versions of this game has been done, such as "Bomber" from Commodore Format’s Powerpack.

This has nice graphics and sound, but seems merely a training exercise of game programming. Not a lot to offer.

Unless the final game was to offer something a lot more than this, we would have been looking at a poor game.

Hopefully with the credits in place, we will be able to find out more about this little game.

Collect the rocks in a wagon.. nice…


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/under-the-ground/
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Underland  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A great surprise has appeared out of Laxity for all you dungeoneers as they have released a preview version of the aborted C64 game, ' Underland Preview '. This is a dungeon crawler RPG in which you can select your very own of class of character such as Ranger, Paladin or Necromancer and begin your destiny at different areas before traversing the eery tunnels and fighting evil beasts!

Although the game has no music and takes an age to load and swap between the different zones, Laxity has made the process much more simple from the original which has separate dungeon and pictures disks, by placing it all on a one sided disk. So if the game asks for another disk, just hit the space bar and it continues as normal.

As for what is missing from being an aborted game, we are not too sure other than the music and possibly not having every dungeon available to play through, due to time constraints today, we couldn't play the entire game from start to finish.


http://www.indieretronews.com/2016/01/underland-preview-aborted-dungeon.html
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Unknown CRL game  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A bit of a shock when looking through some Darren Melbourne disks which C64.com preserved.

This was simply labelled on a disk “Unnamed”, and it is certainly a game which was meant for CRL (due to the CRL logo appearing in the corner. It feels very much like a Power House game and has you flying a 2 sprite high man around a single level it seems (It seems to crash when you go into a door).

It is quite similiar to Rocket Roger in a funny way – so was it inspired by it?

As the game was on the same disk as Duel, we are wondered if the game was actually written by Finlay Munro, as Finlay also wrote Vengance and Real Stunt Experts for CRL in the past. Vengance has a similiar graphical style to it.

Finlay confirmed in 2012 that the game was his, but he could not recall what it was actually called and why it was never released.  What he can recall has been added to Creator Speaks.

Clem Chambers could also not recall anything about the game, but stated that he would have wanted a good platform game then as they never did much in that genre.  So we still have no name or idea what happened with the title.  It has been suggested though by Graeme Mason that the game could well have been intended for Power House, which Clem would not have seen.  Seems like this could well have been the case, and we hope to hear from someone from Power House soon to confirm more about the game.

Still plenty of research to be done, but check it out for now! Thanks to Slator for the fixed file!

More soon on this one…

Contributions: C64.com, Darren Melbourne, Slator, Finlay Munro, Clem Chambers

--

Finlay Munro recalls about this unknown CRL game:

"Yeh, that unknown one is one of mine. Dont think it was ever finished, but then again I remember very little about it. Didn't he have some spinning power-up things orbiting him?

Quite surprised Darrens disks are still working and readable after all this time - nice one!  Can't for the life of me remember its name. It was a really early one for me.

If it's the one I'm thinking of ( and I must stress I may have got this wrong ), it had the enemies spawning from generators. You can see one of these in one of the screenshots you pointed me at. They were character based, and you could have loads of them. Each one was maybe 3X3 or 2X3 chars. Dunno. They moved about simply like gauntlet enemies, and would only move left and right, or drop down. So you'd get them all piling up on top of each other. Also some sprite based enemies were in there too.

Don't know the year I'm afraid. It must've been just before CRL stopped trading."


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/unnamed-crl-game/
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Unknown Shooter  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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1988 Cory Kin
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Cory Kin
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: N/A

We found this game on one of Cory Kin’s disks by itself as a single executable. No clue to what it was or any name. Tucked away in the code was 1988 AKO, which confirmed that it was the work of Cory.

This is a very early sideways scrolling shooter with some very neat sprites and attack waves. There was no backdrops in the first preview we found, and the score panel was just test graphics – but it looked very slick at this early stage and is a shame never to have been completed properly.

In 2014, we converted another batch of disks from Cory and found a later preview which had some background graphics and more sophisticated attack waves.  The title on the disk was “Almost a game”, so there was still no title thought of at this stage.  We’ve added the files for you to check out.

Also found on one of the disks was a set of graphics intended for the game, showing some large enemies that never got integrated.

Enjoy and we hope to find out more from Cory soon about the game!


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/unknown-shooter/
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Up in the Air  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Vandor  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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Vandor
1994 Bithunter Software

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5
Coding: Unknown
Graphics: Unknown
Sound: Unknown

GTW presents what could have been very similiar to Newcomer… and it seems that this game was the reason for its demise.

This game is an unfinished Hungarian RPG, which was started in 1992, and cancelled in 1994 as the team felt that they could not compete with the Newcomer game which was in development at the time.

Very unfortunate, though the programmer on his website has left the game open for discussion, and asks the userbase if people still wish to see the game… http://www.freeweb.hu/bithunter/vandorlasok.htm

I don’t feel that the game will ever be completed, though it would be nice to preserve what remains and allow people to see what could have been. At the moment no contact has been made, as there is a language barrier present.

Hopefully Viktor will help us get in touch, and also translate some of the documents on the site which explain the game and its concept it much greater detail.

Its very early days with this game, but a very interesting one from the shots which are now online…

Interesting RPG from Hungary…


Contributions: Viktor Vargor


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/vandor/
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Venturia  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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A sad tale for this unfinished RPG game.

This was in development by Waveform in the 90′s, but sadly the game’s creator John Kaiser died in April 23, 1997 due to Hodgekin’s Lymphoma. John left behind this very title which was released into the world by XmikeX. XmikeX was a friend of Waveform and released the remains on August 28, 1997, through disC=overy magazine. It was embedded within the magazine text as a UUEncoded sfx file.  Jon Mines recently confirmed that the game was to be published under the Stallion Software label had John finished it.

According to rumours, all of John’s source disks and hardware were given to another C64 scener, which may be Roy Batty.. though there is news of Ernest Stokes having some disks and hardware. This was brought up due to the possibility of someone finishing what is excellent work by John.

It is sad to put a game into GTW for these reasons, but it would be wrong not to, and one thing left to do for John’s title is to immortalise it and preserve what it was.

It is a nice little RPG, and thanks to TRIAD recently cracking the game, they have put the instructions into a note file at the beginning of the demo.The basic controls are : ‘ { and / on the PC keyboard to move the little man around the world.

It seems that the game didn’t reach a large stage of completion, as there is not too much on the disks, but it depends on how big John was planning this game to be. Hopefully friends of John will be able to shed some more light on his title, and we’ll be able to read the doc file which is with the download.

A lot more work needed to fully preserve this game in GTW, but for now this is a masterful piece of work to check out and hopefully John will be pleased that people can enjoy what he managed to create.

Jon Mines suggests that there is a second preview which includes the titles screen, company screen and an intro screen, which we hope to add to the main download very soon!

A sad tale to a GTW…

Contributions: Loribee, Jon Mines


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/venturia/
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Vertical Shooter  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1988 Cory Kin
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Cory Kin
Graphics: Cory Kin
Sound: N/A

Yet another title from the brilliant Cory Kin, and this time a very impressive vertically scrolling shoot-em-up, with some lovely graphics and attack waves.

It’s still early days and a relatively short map, but there is enough here to show case Cory’s talents, which no doubt he was trying to do with this game.  This demo was found on a disk with a number of other executables which we believe Cory sent out to companies to try and get employment.

We don’t believe that this game got any further than this unfortunately, which is a massive shame – as the title does clearly have a lot of promise.  Sadly it isn’t a title which can be picked up by anyone, as we didn’t find any source code for the game.

A cool glimpse at a rather neat title – hopefully we’ll hear more from Cory about the game very soon.

Contributions: Cory Kin


Looks like 'SEUCK' to me...  (Asphodel)
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Viking Child  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
_________________________
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1992 Andras Baneth and Andras Toth
Status: Preview, Findability: 0/5

Coding: Andras Baneth
Graphics: Andras Toth
Sound: Guy Shavitt

Thanks to Pudva for highlighting this particular game which we were surprised to see!…. Prophecy 1: Viking Child was a semi-popular game on the Amiga platform, and was a fairly neat scrolling platformer game. It was very much a Wonderboy in Monsterland clone which was designed by Imagitec.

A preview has existed it seems for some time of a C64 conversion of the Amiga game, which is advanced to the point of having a controllable character on a single screen and some presentational graphics like in the Amiga version. There are also tunes by Guy Shavitt.

Everything seems polished enough to suggest that this was an official conversion that was being done.

Well, thanks to Compounded and his excellent detective work – we got in touch with Andras Baneth, who confirmed that he was working on the conversion back in 1992 at the age of 14.

Sadly the game only got as far as what you can see here, before it was cancelled (the reason we should find out shortly).  So there is nothing more to really search for.  Also it is confirmed that the conversion was not official, and was being done after inspiration of seeing the Amiga version.   A lack of commitment and other priorities for someone of Andras’ age took over, and they realised that there was probably no benefit to finishing the game – and so it was put to rest.

You can read more about the development from Andras below in Creator Speaks.  We hope to hear from Andras Toth about his work on the project at a later date.

Interestingly though, contributor Ross Sillifant mentions that Raze magazine (when reviewing the ST and Amiga versions) had the game down for a C64GS release too.  So was this ever actually started?

Contributions: Pudva, Compounded, Andras Baneth, Ross Sillifant

---

Andras Baneth speaks to GTW64 about work on Viking Child:

“Unbelievable to see this childhood memory making its way online!!! I was 14 in 1992 so it was quite some time ago, and I was the ‘programmer’ and my friend Andras Toth designed the game. Unfortunately, and sorry to disappoint you, but we never finished the game and we only got as far as the intro you have seen.

It was sent to some magazines back then as far as I remember and got positive reviews, but then we just didn’t complete the project. It was certainly written on C64 as I had never had an Amiga, though my friend Andras who did the graphics had owned one and I remember starting to program it at his place, so it could as well have been his Amiga with a C64 emulator or similar.

Hope this sheds some light on the story, let me know if you need any more info :-)”


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/viking-child/
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VVVVVV  (preview v2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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As many of you know, we were the very first to get the news out that the extremely challenging 2010 modern indie game of ' VVVVVV ' by Terry Cavanagh, was made available as a full conversion to the C64 by unctiover and released by Laxity. Well some of you were a bit confused and had asked us if this was the same conversion that was making the rounds some years ago, and our response was no it was not the same one, as can be seen by this latest VVVVVV Preview 2, which has now been released by Paulko64 on the C64.

This conversion by Paulko64 was actually the first one announced some years ago, but after going stale and no news since 2011, it fell down to unctiover to release his fully complete port much to the excitement of the community. However all was not lost, as after Paulko64 felt a little disappointed about his version and seeing this one fully complete, many users felt he should carry on with his as they felt it had more potential. Sure enough as of today Paulko64 has released the VVVVVV Preview 2, although don't expect it to be as complete as the recent port, as this one may crash and even get your character stuck ( It did for us )


http://www.indieretronews.com/2017/04/vvvvvv-preview-v2-another-modern-indie.html#more
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Wandering  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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GTW presents what could have been very similiar to Newcomer… and it seems that this game was the reason for its demise.

This game is an unfinished Hungarian RPG, which was started in 1992, and cancelled in 1994 as the team felt that they could not compete with the Newcomer game which was in development at the time.

Very unfortunate, though the programmer on his website has left the game open for discussion, and asks the userbase if people still wish to see the game… http://www.freeweb.hu/bithunter/vandorlasok.htm

I don’t feel that the game will ever be completed, though it would be nice to preserve what remains and allow people to see what could have been. At the moment no contact has been made, as there is a language barrier present.

Hopefully Viktor will help us get in touch, and also translate some of the documents on the site which explain the game and its concept it much greater detail.

Its very early days with this game, but a very interesting one from the shots which are now online…

Interesting RPG from Hungary…

Contributions: Viktor Vargor
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Warriors
Alternative title: Warriors of the Wasteland
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Warriors

1988 Rainbow Arts

Status: Full Game, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Matthias Hillebrand
Graphics: Matthias Hillebrand
Sound: Tim Kleinert

Also known as: Warriors of the Wasteland 

Warriors is a rather Rastan looking game which was being produced back in 1988 by a group called Modern Arts for Rainbow Arts.   You control a warrior character who jumps across platforms in a horizontal scrolling game.  Best way to describe is probably a cross between Bionic Ninja, Rastan and Hawkeye – scrolling from right to left.

The game was coded and designed by Matthias Hillebrand, with music by Tim Kleinert and was produced over several months with a lot of hard work put in.

At present, all we know is that Rainbow Arts decided not to release the game for reasons unknown, and Modern Arts were not paid for their efforts as a result.  The developer recalls that there were discussions with Rainbow Arts about renaming the game, but he cannot recall the final state of their dealings.   A huge shame…

For years, a preview has been doing the rounds which has titles, music and a few levels – however, in 2013 – Wilfred Bos helped to recover a far more and possibly fully complete version which has more levels and more details within the game.  In particular the intro is fleshed out with more music, and there are sampled sounds when you land in the water.   Wilfred was passed on a more complete copy via a chap called Jürgen who is an old member of Modern Arts, mainly due to the game having a tune by Tim Kleinert which is not currently in HVSC.

It is a brilliant finding, and although it is a very frustrating game to play – with many constant deaths,  the presentation and music is superb for its age and with some trainers it could be a lot of fun to play through.  Also, it is great that the game in its final state has been saved – many would have thought the preview was all that ever existed.  Thanks to Jazzcat, The Ignorance and Pugsy,  the game has been fixed up as well – as it was found that Level 2 was broken.  Overall there have been a number of other fixes and general packing to get the game fully playable.

We hope to hear more from the developers soon, but check out yet another full game saved from the wreakages thanks to Wilfred Bos!

Contributions: Wilfred Bos, Jazzcat, The Ignorance, Pugsy


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/warriors/
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Welcome to hell  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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198? Rättlehead
Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5

Coding: Sammy
Graphics: Zuk, Mick
Sound: Sämmy

Welcome to hell is a game which does not have a huge amount of information available currently.   It was found on the preserved disks of the late Jukka Tapanimäki with no real context or information about it.

We assume that a friend had given a copy of the preview to Jukka back in the day, and it was swiftly forgotten about.  There seems to be no other trace of it online, so it is a crucial finding to ensure at least part of the game has been preserved.

Overall, it is very rough around the edges – looks great, but very frustrating to play with constant deaths at the start.  But its a promising title overall.   However, did it get any further than this?

We have some basic credits from the game’s title screen, but who are they exactly?   And can anyone help shed some more light on this title?

For now, check out the preview of the game!

Contributions: Jukka Tapanimäki


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/welcome-to-hell/
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Wildfire  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1988 Destiny Software
Status: No Download, Findability: 2/5

Coding: Andy, Ian
Graphics: Harjinder Rai
Sound: Unknown

Wildfire was a W.I.P title for a game in development at Starlight Software. The game is not anything to do with the shooter we already have in GTW.

Could it have been a space shooter?… a puzzler?

Thanks to Max Mirni, we have found that the graphic artist was a guy called Harjinder Rai, who worked with Steve Dunn on Call Me Psycho.  From a random forum post, Harjinder mentioned two developer names involved with the game called “Andy and Ian”.  No surnames sadly – though Steve Dunn may hopefully know as we’ve been in touch with him recently.

It was thought that the surname was Taglioni, and the Taglioni brothers of Phillip and Andy worked on the game.  This was confirmed not to be the case by Phillip himself and so we still need to work out who Andy and Ian were!….   Thanks to Richard Hewison with his help on confirming this, and with the next snippet from Francis Lee.

Francis Lee worked at Starlight briefly and recalled briefly about Wildfire.  He suggested that the game was being developed under his Destiny Software label, but the quality of the graphics and overall game just didn’t seem good enough to take it to market.  Francis let the project go in the end despite trying to support the project initially.

When backing up disks from Darren Melbourne in December 2015, we found a preview called Wildfire, which we believed to be an early preview of the very same game – but it wasn’t!

We hope to find out confirmation for sure soon from Harjinder himself soon about the game!

Contributions: Max Mirni, Francis Lee, Richard Hewison


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/wildfire-2/
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Wizard Saga  (preview 2)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Imagine a game like Legend of Zelda, Gauntlet, Demon Stalkers, and Druid. That is Wizard Saga for the Commodore 64. A modern comparison would be The Binding of Isaac as well, with a very similar game play.

The author, OnlineProfessor2010, has been releasing previews of the game since last September. This new version B, released on Nov 4th, contains several updates, 12 bosses, more sound effects, potions, signs, NPC’s, quests and monsters.

The game plays smoothly with great graphics and sound effects – there is no background music yet, but that doesn’t take the fun of the game at all. There is a YouTube video showing the latest additions as well as the download link for the game.

We are looking forward to see more updates!


http://www.vintageisthenewold.com/wizard-saga-preview-game-for-the-commodore-64/
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Wizerior II  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1991 Construction Computer Players
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Marcus Wagner
Graphics: Andreas Bauerfeind
Sound: Andreas Bauerfeind

Thanks to Jazzcat for the heads up about this game, which was shown recently on the developer’s website.

The game was a sequel to a Gauntlet clone which was actually released by Markt & Technik in 1989.  This clone though actually looks a lot more like Gauntlet in terms of graphics!

This late title from 1991 was mostly there, but with just 20 levels – we are not sure why it was cancelled – but assume it was due to moving onto the Amiga platform.

The game was fixed up and released by Laxity in late 2016, so go and check it out now from the downloads!

We hope to find out more soon from the developer himself.

Contributions: Jazzcat, Goat/Laxity


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/wizerior-2/
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Wonderboy V1
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Wonderboy (C64) – a rather different looking version  (From GTW64):

Some years ago I was talking on the Lemon 64 of a strange recollection of a rather different  looking version of the C64 Wonderboy.  I had the budget edition of the game, which I played to death – but also later picked up the game on a Beau Jolly 30 pack of games.  The recollection was of a rather expanded looking main sprite (where as the version I originally played had two sprites bolted together).

Our blocky hero who looks like he’s on LSD

Sure enough – on further examination, the Beau Jolly edition was rather different.   After some initial examining back in 2008 and quick comparisons – I found that it wasn’t just the main sprite that was different, but some sprites and segments of the game were quite different.

It’s been long overdue, but i’ve finally gone through a good bulk of the game to bring a proper look at some of the key differences between both games.  Below are some comparison screenshots and interesting differences i’ve found.

Originally it was believed that this odd version was the NTSC version of the game – with cut down sprites due to speed issues; but that doesn’t seem to be the case.  This in fact looks to be a slightly earlier version of the game, which may have been sent back to the developer to make some amendments or final changes on request.   One critical omission has to be the Skateboard – which does not feature at all in the Beau Jolly version.  You will also see a slightly different end after killing one of the big bosses as well at the very end of the screenshots.

So how did it come to get released on the Beau Jolly pack?  We are not quite sure – maybe Activision/Electric Dreams accidentely gave a pre-final change version of the game instead of the correct final master version.  It is believed that the same thing happened with Enduro Racer, with Nick Pelling’s unfinished version sneaking out on some packs.

Shortly after posting this entry, Gurt on the Lemon64 forum found a promotional video which shows an even earlier version of the game.  It seems to be earlier than the V1 Beau Jolly title with a different expanded sprite, a different font used in the top panel and high res parts to the background graphics.   The video can be found towards the bottom of the screenshots, along with screengrabs.

Also – I later played all the way through the entire game – and as well as enemy patterns I can establish the following:
Music does not slow when getting the enemy fairy
Fairy only starts appearing half way through the game
Says “Game Over” after completing every level on the last Area (Area 7)
Slightly different completion screen – still small girl (even though the big sprites exist).  Last character explodes into loads of 100 points with last object to collect.

But! … after Game Over then appeared for Point 4 – I was suddenly in “Area BLANK Level 1″…. Wonderboy’s very own “World 0″.

As you can see, the top object part is now corrupt – but the level starts from this point, and the platforms are all borked.  It seems to be a portion of Level 1.   As you go to the end of the level, there are 3 flames which seem to be impossible to pass to see what comes next.  It’s likely just a glitch in the game – but could be that the coder at this stage didn’t tidy up properly and deliberately put in 3 flames to prevent the player from progressing.  I’m hoping we’ll get past the flames soon to see if it then proceeds to crash.

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Beau Jolly Big Box: 30 Mega Games is a collection of 30 games and contains the following:

Ghostbusters
Enduro Racer
Hacker
Big Trouble in Little China
Wonderboy
Championship Football
Guadal Canal
Aliens
Spin Dizzy
Rampage
Corporation
Explorer
Ace 2088
Championship Basketball
Super Sprint
Knightmare
Galactic Games
Real Ghostbusters
Gee Bee Air Rally
Championship Baseball
Dandy
Mermaid Madness
Star Raiders II
Park Patrol
Prodigy
Incredible Shrinking Sphere
High Frontier
Firetrap
Super Hang-On
Karnov


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2013/04/wonderboy-c64-a-rather-different-looking-version/
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Yloa  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1986 Construction Computer Players
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Marcus Wagner
Graphics: Marcus Wagner
Sound: Marcus Wagner

Thanks to Jazzcat for the heads up about this game, which was shown recently on the developer’s website.

The game was an RPG which was looking to shape up pretty well back in 1986 when it was in development.  However, for reasons as yet unknown – the game was never finished and released.

We assume that the title would have been published by 64’er had it been finished.

Thanks to Marcus, the remains of the game was made available for people to check out – which we have also added here.

We hope to find out more soon from the developer himself.

Contributions: Jazzcat


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/yloa/
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Yloa's Complex  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Zak is Back! (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Coming soon!...
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ZE-III  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Zone of Darkness  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1995 Cherry Software

Status: Preview, Findability: 3/5
Coding: Marek Matula
Graphics: Wojtek Niemczyk
Sound: Wojtek Radziejewski

A promising game from the once promising Cherry Software. Coded by Taboo, the style of game was to be a cross between Flashback and Impossible Mission.

The intro features a stunning 3D filled vector car driving around with fluid movement (Reminiscent of the Another World intro). Also it featured some haunting music by Shogoon and some nice graphics to match. I still remember being shocked watching the intro.

The game actually came to a halt when the development team went their own ways with other projects. According to the programmer, the game was very close to completion, all that needed doing was the level design.

A huge shame… Nothing was ever seen apart from the intro sequence, but GTW is proud to show you part of what the game was to look like. There are now some screenshots of the game’s main character moving around… and its VERY Flashback style!… Taboo kindly handed over all the game and its sources, but sadly these bits were lost a few years back in a hard drive crash, and are currently being recovered again from Taboo for GTW release.

GTW can finally now confirm that sadly no working version of Zone of Darkness is to be available in the near future, but we may yet find something. We for now exclusively release the Character test demo, which allows you to move a very good Flashback character around a test screen… This gives an indication of how the game was to roughly play…. Yes… a Flashback clone!…

 There are level graphics existing, which we are attempting to find. Hopefully we will be bringing these to you soon, but the game never really got to a playable state before it was cancelled. It would have been no doubt a Flashback/Impossible Mission clone.

The level designs will hopefully reach us soon via more screenshots, but we are in negotiation to find out more also from the developers themselves… More soon we hope to get a big story on this massive game (at least from the intro perspective  )

Trivia – Commodore Format once cocked up by proclaiming the intro to be the introduction to a Seuck game called Road Course.

More to come soon we hope!…


Contributions: Kenz, Jazzcat, Witold Bryndza

http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/zone-of-darkness/
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Zorro in Wonderland  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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199? Megastyle
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Ruben Spaans
Graphics: Ruben Spaans
Sound: N/A

Zorro in Wonderland was a game that had a preview sneaked out many moons ago, but nothing was really known about it. Ruben Spaans in 2012 sheds some light on the game:

“This was just a “test game” I wrote because I wanted to try out a graphics engine similar to the old Sierra adventure games, and see how it performed on the C64.

I believe there is a release by Urine or something, there is no newer version of the game than that one, and no plans were made to expand on the game either.”

So that was that!…. purely a test game with no intention of there being more to it!…..

Case closed!

Contributions: Jazzcat, Ruben Spaans, Nemo


https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/zorro-in-wonderland/
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Zrenite  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1992 Hi-Tec
Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Anthony Wilder
Graphics: Wayne Billingham
Sound: Anthony Wilder

Zrenite was a game being worked on by graphic artist Wayne Billingham with a friend from school Anthony Wilder.

The game was worked on after school for years, and finally it was signed to Hi Tec in 1992. Sadly just as they were about to release the game, the same fate happened which happened to Daffy Duck.

The game was a two-way side scrolling SEU, with big sprites and some gameplay to make it a worth while purchase had it been released. It wasn’t the best game in the world, but it was a good strong budget title.

So although complete, sadly the game has never surfaced. But now GTW has been able to uncover the game from Wayne’s collection. It isn’t quite complete as the end sequence is missing, so there could be more to find. The game is not bad at all and is well worth a play.

GRG has also fixed up the game and defrozen it, which is also included in the download along with the various versions of the preview. It’s a little unplayable because cheat modes are enabled by default in the game.

A good strong finding for the archives – enjoy!…

Contributions: Wayne Billingham, Jazzcat, GRG



http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/zrenite/
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Zyflex  (preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Zynon  (Preview)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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198? Ian and Michael Jones
Status: Preview, Findability: 4/5

Coding: Ian Jones, Michael Jones
Graphics: Rob Whitaker
Sound: Jeroen Tel

Zynon is another long lost game this time from Ian and Mic. It originally was not known what the game was about, but we can confirm thanks to Rob Whitaker that is was indeed the preview already in Gamebase: http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=8932&d=18&h=0

It was in an interview with C64.com that Ian and Mic told the site that they had done a game called Zynon which was unreleased. There was no other details apart from this.

Rob confirmed that he did some very quick graphics for the game, but it was scrapped by Ian and Mic for reasons unknown. It seems Ian and Mic passed it onto Bod to crack and release and all that exists is what is in the preview where the map finishes and you cannot progress any further.

In a temporarily leaked document from Charles Deenen, there was a release list for Maniacs of Noise, which had Zynon listed with “Reptilla Design” as the company.  Co-coincidently, Jeroen Tel had a Zynon set of tunes in HVSC, as well as Charles Deenan – no doubt meant for the game!   We have added this now to the entry.

With tunes added, it seems that maybe the game was meant for at least a budget release.  Ian and Mick were writing the game, but just lost interest during its early stages and decided to scrap it and work on other titles.

What you see here is pretty much all that was developed.  Case closed!

Contributions: Andreas Wallstrom, Rob Whitaker, Michael Jones

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Michael Jones speaks about work on Zynon:

“The development of Zynon was very early stages and never really turned into anything. Up to this game we were writing whole games in advanced and then approaching publishers for interest.

We decided to scrap Zynon and start to pencil down game ideas and pitch them to software houses for work and get advanced payments prior to developing any code. This development model worked better as we were running a business with staff, costs, rent and equipment. We could not gamble on writing an entire game taking 3-6 months and then not finding an interested publisher.”


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/zynon/
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